


A Relatively Minor (or Major) Transition

by blackice



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014)
Genre: College nerds, Eventual Relationships, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Implausible science, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Not Beta Read, Not Canon Compliant, Personal Name Headcanons, Swearing, Tadashi is a bro, This fic won't be any more than T-rated, except not really LOVERS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-20
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-03-18 14:29:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3573089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackice/pseuds/blackice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not that accidentally letting Fred in was his biggest mistake. It was letting him come back.</p><p>Or, William forgets to lock a door, makes antagonistic impressions before making friendly ones, is renamed after a Japanese food product, plays behind-the-scenes matchmaker with a bike-enthusiast, ends up being the last man standing in the lab for consecutive nights (Fred lays around on the floor), and learns just what makes a relationship happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Edited 10/30/2016.

“ _What_ ,” says William, “are you doing in here?” He makes himself look menacing, a task made criminally easy when he is big, black, and broad with thick muscles layering his shoulders and chest. The stereotype doesn’t faze the thin, goofy-faced intruder; the bastard grins.

Try as he might, William cannot forget Tadashi’s words of warning. Lock the door from the inside, said the engineer. Never know what types of folk wander the _open-campus grounds_ , said the engineer. The solemn voice doesn’t fade from William’s head – neither does the bastard fade from his sight.

Ill-fitting clothes. Cheap color in his hair. William narrows his eyes. A forced slouch in the posture completes the bastard’s appearance. Nobody in William’s classes (or even the communal lab roster) is reminiscent of him. “You’re not a student here,” he concludes aloud.

“Right-o, Mr. Green Sweater!” parries the intruder after a few seconds. “I, sadly, don’t possess the smarts to be allowed in here, but _you_ don’t have the street smarts to lock a door!” He beams. “Funny enough, neither do I at times!” Loping forward, he extends his hand. “I’m Fred, hello, how are you? Did you know it took like ten minutes for you to realize I was here?”

William, out of spite, doesn’t shake the hand. He wants to kick Fred out, boot him over the threshold. “No,” he mildly responds instead. “Just Fred? You really are homeless.”

With awkward grace, Fred slides from offering his hand to dancing around William and peering at the other projects. He stays a good distance away from Maria’s chemistry collection of glass curving apparatuses and Erlenmeyer flasks, strays too close to Ethel’s dismantled bike and magnets, and almost enters Tadashi’s domain before William comes to his senses.

He snags Fred’s shoulder with a stern grip, spins him around. “You’re trespassing,” he says with a veneer of calm.

“You,” says Fred reasonably, “were working on something before you noticed me.” He blinks innocently at a spot next to William’s ear. “The metal stick’s sparking. Is that supposed to happen?” Fred slips from William’s loosened grip and sidles away, not that William’s paying attention because there is a _mini-fire_.

One of them yelps and runs for the fire-extinguisher. The other leaves with a cheery: “I’ll be back tomorrow!”

-

Maria – tall, thin, gorgeous and kind Maria – asks him kindly the minute Professor Callaghan leaves the STEM kids in the lab, “What _happened_?” Options on why she’s questioning: a) he must look _awful_ , b) his sweater is singed, or c) he forgot to wipe off the extinguisher foam off something.

If Maria is picking out the discrepancies in his appearance, though, then he has no idea how Ethel’s been restraining herself from criticizing him. Tadashi is nice enough to offer silent bro support from halfway across their sectioned off area, which means his peer is abandoning him to a sugar-sweetened death of well-intended inquiries.

“There was a visitor last night,” he begins diplomatically.

“ _Hello_ , science kids!” Fred has burst through the door, wide smile on his face. “I bring the invitations to a cheap, most likely free, lunch. At the cafeteria.”

William pinches the bridge of his nose, huffs out angry puffs of air. “That,” he grits out, “would be the visitor from last night.”

Ethel chews her bubble-gum, makes a patented bitch-face. "You didn't kick him out," she accuses. At his noncommittal sound, her brow furrows and drags sharply down in disapproval. This is how she cares: "You idiot, you could've been murdered by... " She assesses Fred. "This stick."

Spinning like an ungainly ballerina, Fred twirls near Ethel and extends his hand magnanimously. "Fred, at your service."

She pops the bubble derisively and looks at Maria for help.

Maria takes the leap of faith in the wrong direction. “You mentioned a free lunch?” she asks hopefully. “I think there’s a two-for-one deal on California rolls.” William jerks his head to Tadashi, the only man who could plausibly persuade Maria that humanity is not made of puppies and kittens, and says with his eyes: _Make a stand_.

Tadashi eye-smiles. _Not gonna happen_.

-

They go to lunch, and several things happen. Firstly, it takes them fifteen minutes and the time to order their food and drinks before they realize they haven't given Fred their names. Secondly, Fred nicknames them. Thirdly, Tadashi Hamada (the self-serving prick) smoothly interrupts Fred with a "Tadashi" before smugly letting Ethel be renamed Go-Go Tomago. 

William has been dubbed No-Ginger, but there's a wrinkle in Fred's brow, like the name doesn't fit him. Privately, William doesn't think so either, but the alternative is to give in and follow Tadashi's route which – well, he's hinging on the chance that Fred will adjust the nickname.

The chance shrinks more and more as the nicknames start to stick. Maria's penchant for downing honey-lemon tea and Ethel's preference for tamago and speed work against them, and now William catches himself referring to them as Honey Lemon and Go-Go. 

Then his hand knocks the dish of wasabi and soy sauce on himself, and he yelps. Soy sauce soaks through the denim, and the green lump of spices sticks furiously to his lap as William gingerly hooks the little dish between his fingers and places it flat on the table. He then grabs for Fred's napkin, and yes, Fred is peering over and down at the mess in William's lap. His eyes brighten. "Wasabi!"

It sticks.

-

“Remember when you still called me William?” laments Wasabi to Tadashi. The former’s pulled his unruly hair back in a queue, and he’s tweaking the laser conductors with tiny tools that look smaller in his hands. Tadashi’s hard at work on organizing the files and research documents cluttering Wasabi’s school desktop.

Fred, napping on the recently acquired beanbag, pulls himself awake. “William?” the drowsy idiot repeats, and Wasabi resists the urge to shiver. Fred yawns. “Man, I think I’ve done you a favor. Also – Wasabi and William. Both start with W’s. S’like _fate_ , am I right?”

“Coincidence,” corrects Wasabi shortly. Tadashi’s hand lands on his shoulder; he glances at it bemusedly, then at Tadashi’s face. “What?” he murmurs.

The hand gives a bracing pat. “Glare any harder, and you might grant Fred’s wish for personal combustion.”

His voice is loud enough to carry over to Fred. “Ah-ah!” Wagging a finger, Fred squints at the two of them. “If he glares any harder, then it’s not personal combustion anymore. It’s just explosion.” The logic boggles Wasabi.

If he’s being honest, _Fred_ boggles Wasabi. “Someday, I am going to sit you down – ”

“I remember Ethel before she was Go-Go,” sighs Tadashi wistfully, and he barely flinches when an unbalanced maglev wheel hurtles over his head and clatters to the linoleum floor. The wheel’s edged with thin slices of metal, and the woman throws hard and fast – braver men have flinched. “And William before Wasabi,” he adds for Wasabi’s sake, reaching down to pick up the wheel and place it on the tool table. “He was very by-the-book.”

“I’m still by-the-book.” He pries apart the metal casing of one pillar. “All I do is the system.” It’s a practiced banter, one that still flares to life when Callaghan asks them about revolutionizing technology.

Fred, unwisely, interrupts. “Then why’d you choose to be an applied physicist? Aren’t you supposed to, y’know, _create_? What’s the word… _innovate_?”

“Thanks for the input, you walking thesaurus,” says Wasabi. “And it’s not always about innovating! Sometimes it’s about perfecting a technique or an experiment – ”

“Okay,” the bastard responds. “But if you’re following step by step so perfectly, how exactly are you perfecting anything? Aren’t you just, eh, staying in place? No progress, nada? Sounds kinda bad for a scientist.”

Wasabi does his best not to cut a wire, but he presses his lips tight.

Honey Lemon, who’s by now supernaturally aware of the emotional atmosphere of her strange clique of friends, grabs Go-Go and ushers her out the door. Then she goes to get Tadashi. Like the jelly boba pearls in milk tea, Tadashi makes a token resistance against the vacuum but eventually concedes; he bids Wasabi a lingering warning glare.

The door swings shut behind them.

His hands, dark and calloused and scarred with proximity burns, set everything down and curl into fists on the surface of the table. They seem inordinately big next to all of his finely-crafted tools. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I work by-the-book.” The damnable phrase claws its way out of his throat.

At this point in his college career, he does _not_ need a paradigm shift. Not now, when he’s two years into his major and excelling at taking proven theories and putting them to the test.

“You should aim higher,” says Fred caustically. He’s still pretending to be under ragdoll physics, limbs everywhere are he stretches out like a cat.

Wasabi sees the wheel. Despite the regrettable version of events he can vividly see in the future, he grabs it. He more or less hurls it like a Frisbee towards Fred, who is still limp on the beanbag, utterly oblivious to his impending fate.

Fred rolls off the beanbag.

The wheel embeds itself deep into the cushion, but it doesn’t slice the fabric apart; Wasabi feels fortunate in that aspect. Otherwise—he slowly uncrooks himself, reeling in each limb back to some semblance of calm.

His fingers are firmly placed flat on the cool tabletop.

Green eyes track his every movement, and it takes Wasabi a few seconds to realize that Fred’s waiting for the next outburst, elbows already propped up to grant him an easier line-of-sight. _Good going, you brutish idiot_ , he thinks. Maybe to Fred, too, but with an emphasis on ‘idiot’ than ‘brutish’. But instead, the first words slipping out of his mouth are, “I’m sorry.”

Laconically, the thin bastard flops back down to the ground. He makes a dismissive sound while avoiding the scholarly trash (read: the bag of Tadashi’s aunt’s donuts) on the floor, and eventually, Fred makes the daunting uphill roll to the center dip of his abode. “Hey, even you gotta let a little steam out now and then, big guy. Be not dammed, as in river dam, I mean – ” he clears his throat. “Let the river _flow_ – ”

“Don’t tell zen phrases to me,” snaps Wasabi reflexively. His fingers curl into fists until he consciously straightens them out again. “And I’m serious.”

“It’s cool,” Fred assures him. “It’s very cool. Cooler than the Bay in the summer. Cooler than the polar vortexes on the East Coast. Ice cool.”

The door cracks open, and Honey Lemon pokes her head in cautiously. Assessing the situation has noticeably settled, she stalks in, all six feet of her and the stern teacher expression Wasabi’s learned to fear since third grade. “You boys,” she starts severely.

Wasabi exchanges a sardonic look with Fred, who only rolls his eyes. He’s shrugged on the ill-fitting homeless bastard feel again, joints and limbs askew.

“ _Boys_ ,” repeats Honey Lemon. Her eyes narrow in reprimand, and her voice teeters to the slightly terrifying tone Tadashi’s been visibly attracted to since day one of freshman year. “No puedo _–_ I can’t – have you settled your differences yet?”

“Yep,” says Fred.

“Yes,” Wasabi echoes in a succinct ‘we’re done’ tone.

-

Wasabi ends up alone in the lab, eleven-thirty at night, due to _external_ circumstances and his bullheaded readiness to overcome the need to sleep.

First to go had been Tadashi, eight-forty-ish p.m.. His mobile beeped, and his resulting scowl automatically screamed ‘Hiro’ and ‘goddamnit’. Following his departure was Go-Go, who claimed she’d rather think about electro-maglev physics in her own house and nowhere near a ‘mad-chemist’. She also mentions ‘ass who thinks his _tools_ are his children and acts like an overprotective mother when I ask for a wrench’, but that part is not noteworthy.

She didn’t ask for the wrench, by the way. She _never_ asks.

Honey Lemon had stayed the longest, filling out a lab report until eleven-thirty hits her like a bus. She yawned up a storm and had blatantly ignored her own body’s cries for sleep until Wasabi insisted. ‘Bad for productivity,’ he’d said.

Honey Lemon left him in the lab with a concerned look in her eyes and an offhand, “I’d call Fred to see if he could stop by, but I don’t think he owns a phone…”

 Just as lightly, Wasabi had returned, “Why would I need company? More specifically, _his_. Your company is welcome and always appreciated, except now, of course.”

“Wasabi.”

“Go home and get some sleep.”

“Go home and get some sleep,” she had mimicked, waving her fingers at him before gently letting the door fall shut.

Wasabi does not need anyone to talk to at this time of night. No, sir, he’ll take his chances of insanity and devote time to his baby laser plasma cutter. He carefully detaches the metal plate and picks at the conduit’s magnetic casing. Precision work, he’s learned through trial and error of exploring career paths, is his specialty. Not that anyone expects it of the man with the hands as big as a dinner plate.

Nothing wrong there. The problem of his laser cutter is that it’s slow to activate and inefficient in power usage. Wasabi’s been trying to diagnose the cause for the past week, using up his nights to take apart the poles and put them back together in an effort to ‘fix it’.

“Damn it,” he mutters, beginning to dismantle the pole yet again.

The sound of the door swinging open barely fazes him. Fred dances in with a brown paper bag cradled in his elbows, singing off-key one of the newer J-Pop tunes. He crescendos until Wasabi considers lobbing a wrench in his general direction, then Fred abruptly switches to English. It’s a cheesy love song, dating back to the early 2000s. God knows how Fred’s aware of it.

Fred changes tune and wails an instrumental score of abhorrently high notes, then gracelessly drops to lounge at his beanbag. He sets the paper bag down to the side and pulls out a dogeared copy of a trashy sci-fi novel. One of many, Wasabi assumes.

Vainly, Wasabi hopes Fred will realize there’s only one man here, obsessively poking away at his creation for some invisible fault, and proceed to leave for better conversation in the 24/7 nightlife of San Fransokyo.

“So!” says Fred, brighter than he has any right to be during the witching hour. “Did I come at a slow time? Is it not rush hour yet?”

“It is for me,” answers Wasabi, trying to fend off any friendly overtures with brusqueness. The natural politeness still worms into his tone, though, which – he’s tried to get rid of it, if only because a seemingly willing ear invites _conversation_. He’s done his best to adopt the liberalist attitude (or the badassery Go-Go emits) of San Fransokyo,  but the farthest he’s gone in discarding the formality of the valley is cursing Tadashi out at the gym, dying while executing flawless pull-ups.

So the polite deferential tone lingers.

“Rush hour? Ah, well, no worries. I hear that people who wait for rush hour to end get bigger fish when they go home. Or no fish. Depends on the family I guess.”

Too late, Wasabi realizes he’s lost sight of the conversation. He assumed the rush hour was a figurative reference for cramming; apparently it’s literal. Oh well. “People who wait for the rush hour to end waste their entire lifespan,” Wasabi points out. “It doesn’t end, what are you talking about?”

Fred flops in his sagging chair, and guiltily, Wasabi attempts to return to his work. “That’s really sad,” concludes Fred mournfully. “You really think life is the rush hour?”

“Is _a_ rush hour,” corrects Wasabi.

“That’s _sadder_.”

Somehow, Wasabi endures the hour longer he stays inside the lab with Fred, lasting through the idle questions and tangentially-related questions following those. And at two-thirty three in the morning when the sky is still a dusky velvet and the fog rolls in on cat paws, Wasabi looks at the much-shortened (if reconstructed) pole with a critical eye.

Giving it up for the next day, Wasabi tips the pole back upright. He looks over to see Fred paging through a comic, the watercolor style of art a startling contrast to the usual blinding blocks of color shaped like a man or monster.

Without any warning from his subconscious at all, Wasabi regrets once more snapping at Fred.

“Hey – ”

Fred turns a page and dips the comic an inch down so he can see Wasabi’s routine cleaning procedure. “If it’s anything less than food or entertainment, I’m saying no,” he warns.

“Considering that’s all you leech from my stacks of cash,” retorts Wasabi, and he immediately adds, “sorry, joking.” He bites his tongue, then keeps on going. “Midnight snack on me?” Flipping shut the briefcase of tools, Wasabi spins the new combination lock several times.

Wasabi’s the last to leave, but Go-Go – street-savvy mean Go-Go – is the first to arrive.

“Why, are you asking me out on a date? I totally accept, you sly dog.” At Wasabi’s thunderstruck face, Fred raises his hands for peace. “I’m kidding, man.”

-

 _It’s not a date_ , Wasabi thinks an hour later. He swirls his bowl of miso, but the cloudy mixture rejoins into a dense mass of sodium chloride despite his best efforts. _It’s two friends getting a snack_.

A midnight snack to be sure, but the fast food eateries cater 24/7 for the college kids cramming for tests at eight a.m. in the morning.

Fred quietly demolishes a pile of sushi and tempura, putting aside his normal exuberance for a serenity more typically associated with Wasabi himself. His posture’s corrected itself into a less languid position, and now Wasabi can see him without the homeless guise.

Generally, Fred behaves like a character actor, as if he must contort himself into what he acts. His feelings are genuine, no doubt, but his languid posture and unhygienic manner aren’t. The loose clothes hang on his thin body like curtains, and the green beanie only barely clings onto his cheaply dyed hair.

Yet there are mistakes – Fred cycles through his clothes every week, at the end of a long Saturday, perhaps. A new shirt, advertising a new kaiju movie in theatres. A hoodie emblazoned with a dinosaur mid-roar. No ripped jeans. Beneath the dirt, food, and water stains, the clothes aren’t threadbare.

And he grimaces, sometimes, when he was to crook his spine from ninety-degrees to forty.

“You’re not really a hobo, are you,” says Wasabi wryly.

Fred jumps, then hisses when he sees his sushi roll collide with the white plastic plate, coming apart with a dull thud. “My sushi,” he whispers melodramatically, opting to focus his woes to his food. “I’ll remember you.”

Wasabi finishes the miso soup and adjusts his sleeves so they are bunched up to the crooks of his elbows. “Fred.”

“Wasabi No-Ginger,” Fred retorts. He’s mimicking the stern tone and what he thinks Wasabi’s face looks like: eyebrows pulled down, mouth a flat line. “Started on that theory homework yet?”

“It’s all calculations. Don’t dodge the question—”

“You didn’t ask any questions,” replies Fred, unbearably smug. He grabs the last tempura and shoves it into his mouth.

-

At promptly six-thirty, Fred pushes the door open with a thin shoulder and strolls into the laboratory bearing sugary treats and retail store-brand tea. “I’ve got treats!”

“I don’t want to hear anything unless it’s matcha or chocolate,” warns Go-Go. Wasabi glances over, noting her scrunched-up face as a measure of whether she can tolerate Fred’s cheery behavior for the rest of the evening. Her research has hit a standstill, and it shows plainly on her face. Tadashi’s too, actually.

“I think there’s matcha? I dunno.” Fred squints at his colorful boxes and clear plastic containers. “I kind of picked one of everything and went on from there. Definitely chocolate.” Wasabi lowers his eyes, content in knowing Go-Gp won’t eviscerate anyone in vicinity.

As Fred walks to a relatively empty table, Honey Lemon snags the top two cookie boxes with an elegant hand. “One’s for Tadashi,” she explains blithely. “He’s been holed up with his project for a while.”

“I’d thank him for you, but I’m sure he’ll say it anyway,” apologizes Fred. He dumps the sweets and tea on the table, a veritable tower. Go-Go stalks over and grabs the bottom box, viciously opening it to savage chocolate chip cookies. As soon as Fred bats the tower back into balance, he takes one of the tea blends and goes to Wasabi’s designated area. “Wasabi, look at _this_ ,” he urges, waving the box.

Wasabi deigns to lift his eyes once more, assessing Fred first, then the tea.

He takes the silence in stride. “Yeah, tea. I bought it! I don’t know if this one has any magical healing properties, but the thought totally counts in my favor.”

Against his will, Wasabi’s mouth quirks. Just slightly, though. “You bought the cheapest tea on retail.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” retorts Fred, tossing the box from hand to hand now. “Are you equating value to price? Or origins to price? Because canned soda tastes just as good as bottled.”

“The thought,” says Wasabi, “is appreciated.”

“Ha, thanks.” He steps inside the caution-taped line and moves to place the tea next to Wasabi’s computer, maintaining a wide perimeter to avoid bumping into the poles. Regardless, Wasabi pauses in his work to eye his every action. “Hey, do you have an apartment?”

Instinct leads to an attempt at intimidation: Wasabi crosses his arms. “Why.”

“As in, ‘why do you need to know,’ or ‘why, do you need to crash at my place,’ you referring to me, and my referring to you?”

“… The former.”

“Well, that’s just healthy curiosity.”

-

Fred pesters Wasabi about the hypothetical apartment for two weeks, and even Tadashi’s infinite tolerance runs short. Before Fred’s arrival that evening, the engineer takes his aside and communicates in thorough detail what would be stolen, broken, and chipped the next morning if _Wasabi didn’t keep Fred from asking the question again_.

Helplessly, Wasabi gestures his compliance but still whines, “It’s my sanctuary from you people.”

“I wish _I_ had a sanctuary to save myself from _you people_ ,” snarks Go-Go. “Maybe then I’d get my own zen equilibrium back.”

“I don’t think zen works that way,” says Honey Lemon patiently.

Tadashi jabs a finger over Wasabi’s sternum, forcing the eye contact. “Satisfy him,” hisses the evident maniac, “or I will set fire to you.”

“I’ll help.”

Wasabi doesn’t have long to wait, because there’s Fred, strolling over the threshold of the nerds cradling a fast-food bag. “Fred,” he calls out. “We need to talk.” Fred strolls his way back out the door; after a stern look at his peers to not eavesdrop, Wasabi follows.

“What’s happening?”

“My apartment,” sighs Wasabi. “You really that curious about it?”

Fred eyes him. “You really so insecure about it?”

The desire to argue is violently shoved down and replaced with a contemplative hum. Wasabi’s got zen. He’s got forced zen. “You want to see it?” Once he voices the question, a weight feels like it’s fallen off his shoulders. The bonus: Fred looks absolutely flabbergasted.

For all of two seconds. Affecting a praise-God pose on his knees, Fred makes his eyes water with sadness and emotion. “Holy moly, _yes_. My life’s complete, I’m gonna see the apartment of the green sweater person with minimal hobbies!”

Wasabi pulls him up and clucks disapprovingly at the pair of cargo pants Fred’s been wearing all week. “I’ll give you the three minute tour, then I’m kicking you out.”

“So much more than I thought I’d ever get,” Fred assures him, then the two of them are back in the SF lab—Fred skips, Wasabi trudges.

Tadashi shoots Wasabi a questioning look, and Wasabi shrugs. _Did it_.

 _You had better_ , those narrow ebony-dark eyes respond.

“Speaking of your apartment, Wasabi,” Honey Lemon says, sounding considering more than considerate. Horror rises in his gut—she wouldn’t be hinting at—no, she _would_. “When exactly do we get to see it?” Horror slamdunks a goal and jumps in victory.

Fred sidles close to the conglomeration of tubes and curving glassware. “You want pictures?” He pulls out a flip-phone, something one would get off the kiosks littering San Fransokyo’s streets. “It’s a buck per pic, two bucks for his refrigerator’s insides.”

“I was really hoping for una invitación,” replies Honey Lemon sweetly, sharp-pointed pipet in hand and pointed in Fred’s direction.

“I don’t _want_ to extend an invitation,” says Wasabi, horrified.

Because Go-Go has always been for yanking Wasabi’s leg, she jumps in with a solemn, “This is where you say ‘come in whenever to my house.’”

“ _I don’t want you people_ —”

“It’d be a good friend-bonding experience,” says Tadashi thoughtfully. He’s sprawled in a chair, laptop perched on his thighs. Keys click in furious, rapid succession as he works out the kinks in his robot AI. “But hey, if you don’t want to, I guess we could always go to Go-Go’s.”

At the very least, Wasabi can say that Tadashi had a bit of the bro-spirit in him.

Go-Go points a laser drill at Tadashi’s laptop, and he hauls it above his head. “You don’t get to come into my house.” She motions at his entire chest, absolutely disgusted. “Especially if you don’t have street smarts. Go to Wasabi’s with Fred.”

“Hey, I got first dibs,” protests Fred. “I get to go first _alone_. And then I can tell you guys what it looks like, and then you can decide if you wanna go.”

“Hn,” grunts Go-Go. She squints first at Fred, then at Wasabi, then gives up altogether.

Four hours later, everyone is packing up to go home, and Fred is paging through an avant-garde kaiju comic Wasabi bought on a whim at the ninety-nine yen store. Once Honey Lemon’s gone for the dorms, Go-Go to her apartment, and Tadashi to his aunt’s (with probably a detour to pick up his increasingly infamous little brother), it’s only Wasabi and Fred.

“Still want to see my place?” asks Wasabi sardonically, locking the tools’ briefcase. He then cuts the laser conductors, frowns at the sludge-like rate of it powering down, and almost misses Fred’s quiet response.

“You cool with it?”

He looks up. “Thought you _really wanted to see it_.”

The lazy shrug is so patently false, Wasabi wants to strangle him. However, the sincerity rings true. Fred can actually communicate in a serious fashion. “If it invades your privacy, then it’s not so worth it,” he explains.

“… It’s just an apartment.”

“It’s your _sanctuary_.” Fred does his best to mimic Wasabi’s earlier injured tone. Evidently, he’s been eavesdropping. “If you really don’t want me to go, but I still go, then you give me the three-minute tour and I’ll spend the entire time wondering why you’re so fidgety.” He grins. “Or how you probably have everything color-coordinated to green.”

Jokes and banter are Fred’s closest friends and his suit of armor.

Wasabi’s common sense _was_ his. “Well, then.” He clears his throat and shoulders his backpack. “I haven’t cleaned in a while, so maybe it’s to your tastes. C’mon.”

-

He flips the light-switch on, Fred at his back.

“I was _kidding_ ,” marvels Fred. He stands on his toes to see over Wasabi’s broad shoulders, gazing at the green walls of the apartment. It’s reasonably tiny for a San Fransokyo University student, and it’s sparsely decorated. Minimalist. No rounded lines or curves here—only streamlined edges and right angles. “It’s really green.” To get a better view, he sidesteps Wasabi. “This is super green.”

“I like green.” Wasabi pushes past Fred, toes off his jikatabi, and moves for the tiny kitchen, backpack thumping with every step. Fred imitates him and pauses to wiggle his sock-covered toes on the chilly tile.

“How do you even afford the rent? Isn’t it super pricey to be living solo?” He distantly hears the backpack thud onto the floor, but he’s too busy peering at Wasabi’s bedroom door, firmly shut and painted white. “ _Are_ you living solo? Should I expect quarterback Joe to be bouncing in?”

“There’s not going to be any quarterback Joes coming in if I can help it,” says Wasabi. “Did you want a drink?” He pulls out two mugs before Fred can answer.

“Tea’s cool.” A beat. “Or, well, tea’s _hot_.”

Wasabi puts away the second mug. “Just for that,” he tells him, “you can get trashy soda. It’s in the fridge, you savage.” A cupboard opens to reveal a plastic container, the plastic container is full of tea bags not unlike the ones Fred bought a while back.

“What savage keeps it _out_ of a fridge?” Fred leaves off staring contemplatively at Wasabi’s bedroom door and investigates instead the tiny kitchen where Wasabi has pressed himself against the cupboards with his tea cradled in his hands. “Aw, it’s a baby fridge.”

“Stop patronizing my fridge.”

Wasabi watches Fred pull out a soda and pop the top open not two feet away from where he’s slumped against his own cupboards, feeling unusually wiped out. Fred sips his soda then slips away, like a cat, to look at the living room.

“I was expecting that you were really a samurai,” Fred confesses. He blinks at the collection of family photos, then at the collection of stuffy old classic books in the corner. “Or an otaku. Or a secret comic book nerd. Like, really, why else can you and Tadashi keep up with me?”

“Because Hiro, and because I have a sibling who never got out of that phase,” deadpans Wasabi. “You underwhelmed by my apartment?”

“Super overwhelmed, actually! I’m finding things out that I never would have guessed before, like how you were a tiny tiny child.”

He chokes on his tea, but Fred ignores the sound of his friend dying in favor of his more interesting deductions. “You’ve got a thing for modern furniture that isn’t comfortable, except for that squashy-looking sofa.” Silently, Wasabi sets his empty mug on the counter and approaches a rambling Fred. “And—wow, that’s a diploma of awesomeness, go you, baby Wasabi.”

“That’s a primary school graduation certificate,” lies Wasabi. It’s actually a science fair certificate from senior year, but maybe Fred won’t catch the lie because—Wasabi ducks the flailing limbs and winces at the loud yelp. “I have _neighbors_ ,” he says, scandalized at the volume.

Fred is patting a hand over his chest. “I have a heart! Still! Can’t you move louder?”

“There’s only so much space in my apartment,” Wasabi says, but he edges away. “See everything you wanted and or expected?”

“Yep.” He’s now patting his hands over his pockets and looking around Wasabi’s apartment. Looking for the time, maybe? As Wasabi fishes out his own phone, Fred’s chatter runs in the background. “Your media collection lacks some of the classics. You should look into _Samurai Jack_ , that sounds like something you’d like. All futuristic and medievally Japanese at the same time.”

Wasabi holds out his phone, clicks a button.

“Wow, that’s late.”

“Yeah.”

“I guess that cuts the tour short! I’ll take my soda and see you tomorrow afternoon!” Fred slides past Wasabi and pats him once, twice on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I won’t say your place is party-ready. It’s basically party-proof. We’d probably die from Go-Go’s elbows and Honey Lemon’s knees if you tried hosting one.”

“… Yeah,” says Wasabi, warmth curling in his chest, foreign and fond. Then he realizes that he should add on a thought and prolong the banter. “And Tadashi’s ankles.”

“Ankles?”

“Go look at him when he has no shoes or socks on, and then tell me what a dangerous weapon to mankind his bony ankles are.”

Fred laughs. “Alright then! See you later!”

Without further ado, Fred walks out from Wasabi’s one-bedroom, one bathroom, one kitchen-living room apartment and into wherever the hell he goes for the lesser part of the day.

-

“Fred’s not really a hobo, is he,” says Go-Go. It’s close to summer finals of their sophomore year, and right now she and he are the only two in the lab. Honey Lemon still has yet to make the sprint across campus, and Tadashi’s bike has broken down under mysterious circumstances (probably the rebellious Hiro, judging by Tadashi’s disgruntled ‘mysterious’ excuse).

“He is what he wants to be,” Wasabi deflects.

“So, a hobo.”

He hums agreeably. “Think of him like a force of nature that arrives at six-thirty p.m. sharp every day.”

“I don’t want to think of him as a force of nature. That’s not in my job description.”

“What do you think of him, then?”

Go-Go shrugs, discomfort plain on her face. “He’s… Fred. I guess. An idiot.” She eyes Wasabi, her gaze turning keen. “What about you? Is he a _force of nature_?” And the hint should not be so strong, not when it has no supporting waggling eyebrows of smiling lips, but, well, it is. Wasabi clears his throat once. Then several times until he goes into a coughing fit.

Go-Go helpfully pounds his back.

“I like birds, thank you,” he manages.

“I didn’t say you didn’t. Celine still haunts my sleep.”

Celine had been a nice girl, a brunette with wire-rimmed glasses and a curvy figure that accommodated his hands fairly well. And then after a month of dating and harried over-night stays at the lab with Fred as semi-unwanted company, Celine showed her jealous side.

Vocally.

It’d been a mutual decision to end the relationship, and Wasabi hadn’t drowned his arteries in ice cream like Go-Go suggested, nor had he joined Tadashi’s bro-attempt for casual drinks at the local tea bar, nor did he accept Honey Lemon’s repeated propositions to cook him comfort food.

He _had_ taken Fred’s offer to stay at the lab for longer periods of time.

Go-Go’s words rattle in his head. “Why would she haunt _your_ nightmares?” If anything, Wasabi should’ve been plagued with the thoughts of his inadequacy to care for another human’s wellbeing and his inability to maintain a relationship.

“You don’t really think Celine took the mutual dump as well as you did, right.”

“Um.”

Go-Go stares at him. Exasperation bleeds like an arterial wound. “You seriously are… an idiot. She tried for two straight weeks to get the rest of us—minus Fred—to help her back to your side.” As she rants about the stupidity of the get-back-together fantasies Celine entertained, Wasabi tries to place the exact moment he knew they weren’t going to work.

“I don’t even remember the entire argument we had before breaking it off,” he muses aloud, and then he cringes, because of course Go-Go hears.

" _Really_? You don't remember the infamous, 'spend more time with me and not your toys'?" Go-Go affects a whiny tone. "The entire shebang about 'why do I hear about  _Fred_  getting into your apartment and not  _me_ '?" When she says Fred's name, there's an emphasized note of loathing, and Wasabi, startled, digs those long-gone memories back up. 

"Huh."

She throws her hands up in the air. "'Huh', he says. Forget it. You're not fit to handle birds except in the physical manner."

Wasabi offers a wry smile to her. "I  _do_ get many compliments on my physical manner," he agrees, and Go-Go throws a stable maglev disc at his face. 

He barely avoids the disc, but he ends up flat on his back. Wasabi stares at the ceiling in a contemplative manner. "You think she really hated Fred?"

"As the only girl on your side who has an iota of street-sense," Go-Go informs him, "I can indeed confirm she really hated the idiot."

"If she didn't like how much time he spent in the lab with me after hours, she could have volunteered to stay as well," he says bewilderedly. And, wherever Celine was, Fred usually made a hasty exit to Tadashi's sequestered room—Tadashi rarely complained, citing that Fred tended to behave and only poke at stuff when Tadashi wanted to test out his new nursing robot.

Experiment eighty-nine: Fred purposely gives himself a paper-cut, says the customary 'ow', and then gets a face of antibacterial cream. 

Go-Go drops a maglev disc on his stomach; he barely feels the impact. "No one wants to stay in the lab after hours as long you do," she says, "except Fred. Which, again, what exactly do you think of the idiot?"

He shrugs, still facing the ceiling flat on his back. "He's... okay."

Go-Go makes a derisive noise. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where-in couples do what couples will though couples they are most certainly not.

Summer breaks in San Fransokyo only to be greatly ignored by the SFIT students.

The other students mill and wander around for a last clean up; Wasabi sees Toshiko’s table clean for once, empty of the pencils and excessive eraser crap. Ken’s hard-won floor-space for his gargantuan welded conductor-pipe thing (an energy converter?) is now just linoleum, if a bit scorched in several spots. Linel’s mini refrigerator—previously providing all the energy drinks—has been lugged away.

In stark opposition to summer break, Go-Go has obnoxiously stoppered a rolling disposal bin from her rack of tools and the yellow bike of her dreams. Honey Lemon’s work space looks even more cluttered, if possible, and a couple of garishly pink hairbands are scattered over her feverishly-written equations. Tadashi’s room, lovingly locked and bolted, looks innocent of all student occupation.

As for himself? Honestly, Wasabi had been going over the motions of leaving the lab like the other students, even though he hadn’t planned on returning to the valley. He’d just started unplugging his desktop when Ethel caught him, at which point she slugged his shoulder and set him straight.

 _There’s no rest_ , she had told him severely, _for the intelligent._ It’s the warmest compliment she’s ever delivered.

He flips the power for the lasers, watches it finally energize itself in a timely manner, and sighs with relief at the reassuring pulsating blue.

“Still slow?” asks a too-loud voice. Wasabi jumps and goes to hunch instinctively over his precious baby.

Fred yanks at his sweater, a wiry hand curling tight in the soft fabric. “Wait, don’t do that, that’s a bad thing you said not to do!” he cautions.

“ _Christ_ ,” swears Wasabi, stumbling to the side. “Make a little noise instead of—of creeping up like that!”

The thin bastard lets go of the sweater, affronted. “Creeping? My shoes are loud and make ominous sounds, you can’t blame me for your dying hearing.” He brightens as he backs up outside of the caution tape. “So! Still slow?”

Wasabi regains a regular heartbeat. “No, but I’ve still got some ideas to run through.” Fred nods as if he understands, and Wasabi feels an overwhelming fondness for the idiot. So he reaches over and shoves gently at Fred’s shoulder. “Get,” says Wasabi. “I imagine you don’t want to stay late for the summer nights too.”

“Hey, your home’s my home, am I right?” Fred gets a noncommittal sound in answer.

-

Early summer morning, Wasabi wakes to a snarling Go-Go stomping into the lab. He blinks sleepily and raises his head from where it is pillowed on his forearms. Last night’s foray into applied physics apparently turned into an overnight stay, probably because Fred took off early and left Wasabi to be responsible for himself.

The fact that Fred is one of the few reasons for Wasabi to leave the lab is probably a sign he needs another thing to turn his attentions to. Wasabi groans aloud as he stretches aching joints and a stiff back; Go-Go spins to face him, startled.

“What are you doing here?” she demands. Taking in his appearance with a critical once-over (hair barely restrained by the green headband, shadows of a restless sleep under his eyes, rumpled clothes), Go-Go’s mouth tightens.

He makes a token attempt to defend himself. “Well, I—”

“You slept here.”

He splutters a little more, straightens in his swivel chair, spins it to face his wrathful friend. “I was close.”

“Close to _what_? How sleep deprivation produces crucial scientific progress?” Go-Go scoffs and slaps the topic away, though Wasabi guarantees she’ll bring it up later. “Anyway.”

Wasabi eyes her warily. He almost hesitates to ask. “Why are you angry?”

“I’m _irritated_ ,” she corrects, divesting herself of her jacket and stomping around for her blowtorch and refining tools. “Not angry.” Go-Go twists a faucet and watches the spurts of flame go bright blue—she tried once, to make it flicker white-hot. Honey Lemon had been the only one brave enough to persuade her turn it down.

Go-Go is a stoic person, but sometimes Wasabi forgets there is a burning build-up of grudges, resentment, and addiction to adrenaline buried under the layers of measured tones and even looks. A part of him wishes Honey Lemon could walk in, right now.

He drags it out. “With?”

“ _Relationships_ ,” she snaps, finally tugging the protective face-mask over her head. Go-Go brings the torch to a wheel, starts hammering at the edges of steel streamlining the circle.  Muffled, her voice still rings out, “Have you seen them?”

Wasabi digs the edges of his palms into the corners of his eyes. “Them?” he echoes loudly.

“Tadashi and Honey Lemon, you idiot.”

Across the lab at the god-forsaken time of the day, Wasabi tries to make sense of what she’s saying. “Tadashi and Honey Lemon.”

“They’re being _idiots_ , much like you.”

“ _Tadashi_ ,” he repeats bewilderedly, “and _Honey Lemon_.”

Go-Go glances up from her wheel to peer at him closer. “You know this,” she decrees in disgust. “What, did you suddenly develop amnesia overnight?” The flame is shut off, the repetitive hammering pauses, and Go-Go replaces her blowtorch with a blade to carve a hollowed out circle. A round magnet, one of many, waits to be inserted.

Regaining some semblance of normality, Wasabi dryly asks, “What’s the problem with them?”

Swiftly, she swings the blade, point first, at Wasabi. He cringes reflexively. “ _That_ is the problem,” Go-Go enunciates. “There is no _them_ , but they still behave _like_ it. It’s sickening.”

Wasabi blinks. “The blushing?”

“The _stuttering_.” Venom laces the woman’s tone, twists her words sharp and full of loathing directed at the nonexistent relationship that is Tadashi Hamada and Honey Lemon.  “The _lovesickness_. And whenever they make _any_ eye-contact – ”

He’s starting to see where she is hurtling towards. “The blushing,” he finishes. “So what’s wrong with their little – ” she glares “ – okay, not little, but still a _crush_. What’s wrong with it to you?” He waggles his eyebrows, trying to insert a kind of humor to this. “Aw, are you _into_ Honey—”

Sexualities have never been a problem among this particular group of friends, so at least Wasabi knows she is not suddenly lobbing the disc at his face because she is offended. He pushes his legs at the wall and propels himself somewhere safer. The wheel embeds itself into the wall, and Wasabi sees several hundred dollars disappearing in the future – maybe he can cover it up with diagrams or something. “I’m kidding, Christ, is the metal on that still hot?”

Go-Go’s eyes, dark and ebony like Tadashi’s, are narrowed. “Most likely. You were saying?”

“We can probably drop the topic now.”

“ _Good_.”

-

He’s filling a requisition form for his new power source, old-school style with paper, pen, and a clipboard. It’s a familiar scene—ten o’clock at night, Wasabi at his station, the drowsy man-child on the beanbag.

“Why do you always stay behind?” he’d asked once.

“Why not?” Fred had returned. “Geniuses hit everything good at night. And a lot of embarrassing things happen when there’s few people around.” At the same time, his eyes had tracked Wasabi’s venture to borrow Go-Go’s tools and the guilty walk back. “Break into some dance! Sing the Macarena! Dance _and_ sing the Macarena!”

Wasabi had scoffed and returned to work.

“You should go home,” he says absently, squinting at the _REASON FOR REQUISITION_ LINE OF TEXT and the five empty lines waiting for a reasonable rational response. Wasabi opts to skip it for a more optimistic fill-in: _IS THERE ANY DANGER TO THE SURROUNDING PERSONNEL_? Check yes.

Fred curls determinedly on his beanbag. “Nah,” he says, dismissive. “Heard from Go-Go you actually stayed overnight, didn’t even go home ‘til six a.m. when you realized you were in yesterday’s clothes. I figured I might as well stay and chivy you back to your sanctuary, oh mighty clean one.”

Wasabi twists to show Fred he’s raising his eyebrows real high. “It’s summer.”

With a solemn aura, Fred nods in agreement. “It’s summer.”

He clarifies. “What I mean is, don’t you have things to do?” Better things to do? “I’m not even a _good_ conversation partner.” Pity’s a hard and bitter pill to swallow, and Wasabi certainly doesn’t want it from Fred, who deserves to be pitied himself for having violently nerdy friends.

“I start all the conversations,” says Fred bemusedly. “You listen and occasionally make snappy comebacks. It’s not so wrong of a friendship if the conversations are one-sided, you know.”

Off-kilter, Wasabi scrambles for a cutting response. “That’s not a relationship,” he finally says. “That’s a soundboard.”

Dismissively, Fred makes a noise sounding suspiciously like ‘meh’ and reaches for another of his comics.

-

Laboratory was never meant to be mistaken for _sanctuary_ , thinks Wasabi. But today, when Go-Go is on a quiet rampage outside on campus, trying to run over the local wildlife, the laboratory is a very attractive hiding place. He can almost hear the buzz of her bike wheeling past, the hard huffs of air, the way the tires protest against the abuse, the rhythmic clack of the pedals—

Wasabi rolls his shoulders and tries to release the tension from the muscles. He’s hunched over at his desk, pretending to be much smaller than he really is, and no one is in the lab at two in the afternoon.

He’s _not_ lonely. “Why would I,” he muttered darkly, clicking past the pop-ups on his computer screen.

 _Because you’re a social butterfly_?

Instantaneously, Wasabi finds the inner-Fred voice and squishes it like his heavy-soled shoes would to a bug. There is absolutely no need for an inner-Fred voice to even _exist_.

-

“Go away,” says Wasabi plaintively. Sat in his chair for the past three hours doing theoretical work, he’s clearly immovable by any force Honey Lemon has conjured to get him active and/or talkative. Until she dragged in the assistance of the _one_ being who could twist a very productive day into a irritatingly slow passage of time.

Dragged from the center of the lab to the Wasabi’s taped-off area, Fred and his beanbag have blatantly invaded past the tape into his space; the bastard’s limbs are sprawled _everywhere_. Wasabi wants to move them out, because the stick-thin limbs frequently find themselves atop the legs of his swivel-chair, but that’d require the effort of putting on sanitary gloves and redirecting his attention from theory to Fred.

“C’mon,” responds Fred. “I hear there’s a new boba place on campus. You’ve tried boba, right? Taiwanese jelly pearls? I mean, I haven’t yet, because it’s _expensive_.” He squints up at Wasabi, who is trying to maintain his focus. “Is boba even a thing in the valley? ‘S lot more popular out here, especially to us _young folks_.” Fred’s grin widens, not that Wasabi wants to notice. “Let’s get boba! Experience life!”

His foot kicks out at Wasabi’s ankle, but the purposely soft blow knocks any protests Wasabi conjures.

All of a sudden, he feels kind of tired.

With a last baleful glare at the equations and real-life situations on paper, Wasabi abruptly stands. His chair squeaks mutely as it rolls back, and he has to grab at it before it collides with his baby. Soon as he stills the chair’s momentum, he turns his attention down to the silent and watchful Fred. Green eyes are half-lidded with the calculating demeanor Fred rarely shows, but the hard barrier snaps and now it’s a blatant expectancy shining through those eyes. Evidently, Fred doesn’t think Wasabi will rise to the challenge.

Wasabi lives to defy every one of Fred’s assumptions and beliefs.

“You want boba, let’s go get boba.”

He doesn’t mean to phrase it like a challenge, but Fred’s just—he’s just infuriating. And he brings out all the qualities unbefitting a mature independent adult to the forefront.

Speaking of, Fred’s frozen in his lax position on his beanbag. Wasabi sighs and bends down to bodily heave Fred to his feet. The slight weight is hardly a challenge for his arms, and his movement is just clinical and brusque enough to mask any fondness in the gesture. To exaggerate, Wasabi claps his hands and pretends to scrape off imagined dirt and grime.

Fred rouses himself from his shock. “You paying? Or do I pay? Things are _weird_ when the two of us are as broke as an amateur bot-fighter, am I right or am I right?” He (and Wasabi) gives the rest of the lab a cursory glance, like’s he about to invite everyone else into their conversation.

Except, Wasabi discovers, everyone else is neatly distracted. Excluding Tadashi, who is staring straight at the pair. Dark eyes glitter in vague warning, though to whom it is directed to, Wasabi would be unable to say. Then, like the miracle she is, Honey Lemon catches Tadashi’s focus and pulls him into an argument over the benefits of editing Wikipedia articles.

The instant Tadashi turns and gives a soft smile to his not-girlfriend, Wasabi makes a run for it, practically tugging Fred along with him.

The teashop, frequented by the hipsters and the old women and men (professors) in neon tracksuits, holds a kind of homey—if vastly modernized—atmosphere. Fred slinks behind Wasabi and lets the larger man order from the pretty girl over the counter.

Fred orders something heavy and dark instead of milk tea and his jelly pearls; Wasabi gets the cheapest item on the menu, which is still brutal on his wallet’s contents. “Ooh, get me a scone,” says Fred. The two of them are staking out a table for two at the far back, sequestered by other tables and the convenient booth.

“Smuggle your own treats next time,” Wasabi suggests, blithe as can be while being assaulted by appreciative glances. He sees a droll-looking man try and catch his eye, holding his coffee up like an invitation. Quickly, Wasabi lets his glance settle on Fred and then flit back.

The man leaves, message received.

“C’mon, didn’t I buy you tea and treats back in the year?” Sounding not unlike a simpering grandmother, Fred hmms in mock-contemplation. “Right, I _did_! You totally owe me, man.” Wasabi’s words seem to catch up to him, and the bastard brightens. “So, ‘next time’, huh? I’m glad you’re considering another tea time. ‘Course, you know what would make tea time ever _better_ —”

Fred’s voice snags when he hits eye-contact with Wasabi.

“A scone?” Wasabi fills in dryly, bemused as he sees Fred’s eyes flit from him to over his shoulder and back again. “Blueberry? Apple? Cheese?”

Automatically, Fred wrinkles his nose. “Cheese scones, who eats cheese scones at three in the afternoon. Pay attention, Wasabi, c’mon.”

“I’ll people-watch with you when I feel like it— _grab that table_.”

(Not ten minutes later, Fred’s deposited at the small table awaiting his coffee arrival and accompanying scone. He fiddles with the sugar packets for a couple of seconds before pulling out his burner phone. _He’s buying me a scone_ , Fred almost texts Go-Go. He bites the inside of his cheek and backspaces the ‘me’. _Is this a sign he needs a girlfriend_? _When he starts buying SCONES?!1?_

 _Enjoy the fact he’s spending money on you like some sugardaddy_ , Go-Go pointedly replies, somehow seeing that he’s _definitely_ backspaced the ‘me’ before sending the prior message.

Fred’s thumb is jabbing for the trashcan symbol in a jackrabbit pace. It’s enough to hold Wasabi’s eyes for a few seconds more as the man returns.)

“Who’s that?” He sips at his cheap tea sans boba. The processed powder flavor makes itself comfortable in his arteries and tastebuds—to his surprise, it doesn’t taste horrible after a few seconds.

“Uh,” says Fred inelegantly, picking apart his new blueberry scone. “Got any chores to do?”

“I have groceries to buy,” Wasabi admits, seeming resigned at the domestic, non-scientific prospect. “Willing to walk into a market?”

Fred clasps his hands over his heart and mourns out loud how depressing it was that Wasabi always thought the worse of him.

-

“You’re leaving early,” notes Go-Go, attaching wheel No.52 to her tamago yellow bike of the future.

Wasabi can feel her judging him with those narrowed half-lidded eyes, and he tries not to shuffle off the mortal coil at her insinuations. He shrugs on his dark leather jacket and tugs at the stretchy cuffs. Three layers on and the San Fransokyo nights are still chilly. Absentmindedly, he wonders if Fred’s bothered to scavenge for another coat at the goodwill center. “I got groceries to pick up,” he deflects.

Those dark eyes turn to accusing slits of an inky black emptiness. “You’d eat out of Top Ramen cups if you had any option.” Go-Go brings around a blowtorch and ignites it threateningly. “And you’re leaving me with _them_?”

If Wasabi tries, he can hear the nervous wreck that is the conversation between Tadashi and Honey Lemon, and that is precisely why he is hauling ass to escape and buy groceries for his paltry fridge.

“I, ah, promised not to stay late at the labs tonight.” He makes his first attempt to sidle out of the room—what he would give for Fred’s slinking movements (no, stop brain). Go-Go grabs an extendable meter-stick and waves it at him from her side of the room.

“ _Who_ ,” demands Go-Go. She then looks queasy, as if she’s realized something. “Wait, never mind, I know who. Of fucking course he picks this time to drag you off, oh my _god_ —” Simultaneously, a red-faced Tadashi and a flushed Honey Lemon poke their heads out of Tadashi’s office.

Honey Lemon takes the initiative. “Well,” she says decisively, “it’s good someone’s taking you out, Wasabi. Even if your first date happens to be a market.” She gives him the once-over, and Wasabi obligingly spins with his arms outstretched.

He catches on to what she’s said and splutters. “It’s not—what? No, it’s not a _date_. It’s me picking up groceries and trying to live a healthy life.”

“You eat Aunt Cass’s donuts all the time,” says Tadashi slowly, eyeing Wasabi as well. Before Wasabi can righteously swell up in indignation at the probable dig, the man adds, “I know you exercise it out, but still. You eat like you buy things from warehouses. Of junk food.”

Wasabi runs a hand through his unruly hair. “Listen,” he sighs, “I’m just buying fruit. Apples and oranges. Mostly apples.”

While Honey Lemon practically beams at Wasabi’s newfound desire to live a longer life, Tadashi… Tadashi doesn’t _grimace_ , per se, but there is a definite ‘ugh’ in his voice. “You and Newton have the best relationship,” he says drily.

“I’m _going_ ,” moans Wasabi, already stalking out of the lab.  “Oh my _god_ you have the worst references, Hamada, no wonder Hiro gets sick of your jokes!” He escapes just before Tadashi puffs up in pride over his collection of dad jokes, cultured by a lifetime of surfing internet forums.

-

 _Okay, let’s be clear, it’s not a date._ Wasabi loops through several iterations of the same phrase in his head as he picks up a plastic blue basket. It idly swings as he moves through the aisles of the market. _Because we did not agree to meet at the same area_. He rolls apples in his hands, trying to ascertain the quality.

“If you’re trying to smoosh them into a pulp, you’re going about in the right way.” Fred pops up by his side as if he’s sprung out of the ground. He plucks the apple from Wasabi’s hands, delicate fingers avoiding contact with the calloused palms.

“Maybe I wanted apple juice,” says Wasabi.

“Gross. What, you’d wring it out with your hands alone? Like a wet dish towel?”

Wasabi grins and picks out a redder apple. “I don’t trust things I haven’t tested,” he explains. Smoothing his hands over the skin and upon finding no imperfections, he rolls it into his basket. It’s the fifth apple he’s picked out, so he lazily bypasses the vegetables and meat section and heads straight for the dairies. Fred easily keeps up with his long strides.

“Does this maxim apply to all things?” asks Fred innocently.

Wary of the repercussions he feels are coming, Wasabi chooses his next word with the amount of caution they deserve. “Clarify.”

“Ah, you dastardly robot you. I meant for, you know, rollercoasters. Roadside strawberries. _Streetside_ strawberries. Tadashi’s experimental baking goods.”

At the mention of the last, the bigger of the duo fakes gagging. “I have a good stomach for everything but Tadashi’s cooking. That’s why Honey Lemon’s there.”

“To reel him in?”

“To save us all from food poisoning,” Wasabi corrects. They pause in front of the assorted milks on display, and Wasabi only pulls open a door when Fred tugs out a half-gallon of two-percent and tucks it away in the blue basket. “Uh.”

Fred shrugs, a loose movement echoing his usual languid posture. “You don’t look like a soy-milk guy. Or a one-percent guy.”

“Or a whole-milk guy?”

“Oh, just trust me.” Fred looks as if he’ll add something more, but seeing him snap his mouth shut and grin goofily, Wasabi lets his curiosity go for once.

-

“You could pass as a couple,” says Tadashi, wiping sweat off his brow as he and Wasabi finish completing yet another pull-up routine. “Seems your type too.”

With a sardonic glance, Wasabi responds, “I don’t need your lip today, Hamada.” Just to one-up the snippy engineer, he swings himself up one more time on the bar and slowly lowers himself down to drop. “Who are you talking about, again?”

Together, they start loping their way to the gym lockers and showers. “Eh, what’s his name,” Tadashi muses. “Cesar? The graphic arts major who likes to take photos in the labs to put in the yearbook.”

Automatically, Wasabi dismisses the idea. “I don’t even _buy_ the yearbook.”

“Just ‘cause you overheard that your face shows up twice doesn’t mean you have to hold a grudge,” his ‘friend’ points out amusedly. “Anyway, I was joking about Cesar being a boyfriend. He’s camera-happy in a place sensitive to cameras.”

Tadashi has a questionable sense of judgment in just about everything, from friends (Wasabi does not have a lack of self-esteem, it’s just, well, they’re all mostly nerds) to dietary habits (the only reason they’ve started going to the gym is because Tadashi presumed Aunt Cass’s food was great only in great proportions) to romance (Wasabi has yet to implement a get-together plan with the increasingly-frustrated Go-Go).

 “Then this conversation was the set-up of a joke,” Wasabi concludes, relieved.

Tadashi gives him a _look_. “No, I had a point,” drawls the engineer.

“I don’t think I want to hear this point.” Though it pains him deeply, Wasabi forgoes the showers and starts to gather his bag together. He slings his jacket over his shoulder and keeps his hair in the queue and his sneakers laced tight.

As Wasabi makes his escape, Tadashi sends him a reproachful text: _We’re going to stage an intervention for you soon out of the goodness of our hearts._

With the chill of San Fransokyo burning past the dried sweat clinging to his skin, Wasabi manages to punch in: _Funny. Was going to say the same thing to you._

-

Once more unto the breach, said the warriors of old.

Once more into the bipolar realm that is _socializing_ , thinks Wasabi mournfully. Trapped in a ‘summer study group’ his asshole friends insist he attend for sake of his sanity, he doesn’t get the memo that two of the four-person study group are dating. Left alone with the alarmingly gloomy boy of the group, Wasabi has no idea how to interact with him in any positive manner _whatsoever_.

He thinks longingly of how he could better spend his evening – in the lab until midnight with the company of people who never expected him to talk. Instead, he is with three other people in yet another coffee shop, and only he and the boy have brought bags and notebooks from the school year.

“I didn’t catch your name.” Polite manners always got people somewhere, right? It at least disarmed the smaller folk from being too intimidated by his figure. Also, there is a climbing desperation in him to break the tense silence reigning on their side of the table.

“Ken.” 

Ken, dressed appropriately in a thick hoodie emblazoned with the SFU standard, looks absolutely miserable drowning in the thick fabric. A square set of glasses perches on a small nose, and there’s ink staining the other man’s fingertips.

“Hi.” For lack of a better entrance, Wasabi attempts to introduce himself. “I’m William.”

He laughs softly. “Well, I caught _your_ name. Usually happens after a year of sharing a class.”

Across from them, the couple pauses in their exchange of lovesick staring, and they simultaneously go to beam expectant gazes at Ken and Wasabi.

Coincidentally, they both flinch from the couple.

-

“I’m not doing it,” says Wasabi the minute he enters the lab. Go-Go, predictably, ignores his declaration. As he pulls out version 2.0 of his laser beam baby – he’s figured the only way to make progress is to try and ‘revolutionize’ the design – Honey Lemon pulls her attention away from her chemicals and powders to give him a look of concern.

“Wasabi,” she reproaches.

He points his finger at her. “You don’t _know_. There’s no group collaboration. It’s a set-up.” Wasabi stops and rolls over his last words in his head, considers the faintly guilty look on Honey Lemon’s expressive face. His mouth drops open in horror. “What – you – what – _whose idea was that_?”

Tadashi courageously pokes his head from his room. “Wasabi,” he starts off in a stern tone, but then the façade breaks and Tadashi is breaking down into snickers. “Did you—have fun with your study group?”

Wasabi gropes for something, anything to throw at the asshole’s head. He finds a slim volume of Fred’s collection—for whatever reason, Fred stores everything at Wasabi’s desk which _why_ Wasabi still has no idea—and gingerly puts it back before grabbing one of his thicker hardcover editions of the engineering-for-dummies textbooks. Launching it at Tadashi’s baseball-capped head, Wasabi adds as an afterthought, “If it was a _study group_ , maybe I would’ve had fun.”

It’s at this point, Fred waltzes in bearing a large cardboard box of something under an arm.

He hopes the box is not full of stray unvaccinated kittens.

Fred pauses, witnessing the gratifying thud Wasabi’s projectile makes against the wall. Slowly, the alley cat blinks and tilts his head. His mouth pulls into a sudden grin. “What’d I miss in the soap opera that is this summer?” he asks, bright.

Surprisingly, it’s not _Go-Go_ who delivers the dry remark, but Honey Lemon. “We’re trying to unravel Wasabi’s mess of a social life,” the woman sighs, leaning back against her table, crossing her arms, and adjusting her glasses. “ _No duermo porque de mis amigos_ ,” she mutters under her breath.  “ _Ay_.”

“Oh, right, the study group thing.” Fred nods sagely and while walking backwards to his beanbag, he spins to face Wasabi’s stony glare. “How was it?”

“If it was a _study group_ , I’d probably have had a better time,” Wasabi reiterates.

“What, it _wasn’t_ a study group?”

-

Later at night, when he and Fred still remain the last two occupants of the lab, Wasabi musters enough indignation to call Fred out on the entire ‘study group’ thing.

The alley cat raises his hands in a gesture of mercy. “Dude, I swear I had no involvement in the not-study-group-study-group except in the location. Thought you liked coffeehouses with wi-fi and such, you know. “A grimace flashes by, painting his face for a brief moment under the fluorescent light, and is immediately replaced with a presumably heroic smile. “Anyway, if it had been known to me, I would’ve swung by or something to gallantly save the lone wolf from mingling with us commoners.”

Wasabi snorts. “ _Really_. A lone wolf?”

Fred gives him a thumbs-up. “Muscular sheep-dog works too.”

-

Wasabi gets revenge a week later with Go-Go’s help. To be fair, they are only joined in this venture because they share a common interest to finally hitch Tadashi to Honey Lemon. There is only so much light flirting Go-Go’s deep romantic soul can take.

It’s quite devious of them:

“It’d be nice to just throw them in a closet,” muses Wasabi.

Dark eyes lined with eyeshadow spark vindictively. “We _could_ just throw them in a closet.”

“What, the janitor’s?”

“No, you idiot. What kind of romantic are you, you want their first _whatever_ to be in a room full of cleaning supplies that can alternatively be used for drugs?”

“Uh.”

 “I thought so. No, it can’t be a school closet. … How about—”

“ _Not my apartment_.” He is vehemently opposed to the idea after Fred won the right to tour Wasabi’s home, because his home _is_ supposed to be the sanctuary away from the chaos at school.

“Pft.” Go-Go scoffs, “If Fred can survive in your apartment, then surely…”

“What about yours?”

In the end, Wasabi does trick Tadashi into a janitor’s closet minutes before Go-Go persuades Honey Lemon to pick up the mops necessary to clean the intentional scorch marks off the tile. The instant Honey Lemon walks into the closet, Wasabi lunges to slam the door shut and jam a chair under the door knob.

He high-fives Go-Go and relishes in the sweet victory of having gotten one over Tadashi when there is a swift and furious pounding at the door.

“Whenever you’re _satisfied_ ,” threatens Tadashi, “with whatever freakish parameters I fill, you are going to open this door and I will make your life hell, Wasabi.” It sounds like he’s going to say more, but Tadashi gives out a surprised ‘oof’, and then a furious rant in Spanish explodes like a nuclear bomb.

Knowing that of the entire group, he and Honey Lemon are the only ones capable of speaking Spanish, Wasabi interrupts her with an encouraging, “ _Bésalo, chica_!”

Honey Lemon responds with a vicious: “ _Yo he matado muchos hombres y muchas mujeres_! And you two will hardly be the last—oh!”  She’s startled into silence. Though Wasabi’s hoping that she’s just had an epiphany concerning that what he and Go-Go have done was for the greater good, he also bets on Tadashi finally taking some steps into proceeding with a relationship.

Like a particularly bothersome shadow, Fred appears at Wasabi’s elbow. It’s a testament to Wasabi’s composure and “Huh. Are they finally getting together?” he questions guilelessly.

There’s an ominous thud.

Silently, Wasabi shares a look with Go-Go, who has remained mostly silent, if relieved, at the turn of events. She jerks her chin at the chair jammed under the knob.

 _Really. You want me to remove the only obstacle blocking us from death. Why don’t you?_ He motions expansively for her to take the reins.

 _You move that chair_ , her eyes promise, _or I will gut you like a fish_.

Fred only looks fascinated and clearly unhelpful, so Wasabi heaves a sigh, quickly slips the chair out from its position, and tugs open the door. To his utter expectations, it’s Tadashi who falls with his back toward the ground and Honey Lemon who has her arms looped around his neck.

Like Tadashi could ever pin a girl to a wall. No, he’s more of the ‘equal opportunities’ guy.

He ought to be grateful Honey Lemon hadn’t been wearing her mile-long heels. _That_ would’ve been an awkward kiss.

As it is, Wasabi does have to catch Tadashi from causing himself a concussion.

-

“… so I guess the only people who have yet to find relationships in our group are us,” Fred muses aloud. With his spine dipping in a curve to follow the shallow divot in the beanbag, he holds his comics a foot from his face and tries to communicate some nonchalance in his words.

Wasabi is startled from his tinkering, and he hisses at the corrugated sear he leaves in the metal as the result of his hand jerking before raising his head to look at Fred. He feels himself frowning. “What?”

The comic is let go, and it flutters to cover Fred’s face and his mouth, so his reply comes out muffled. “Relationships. You and me are bachelors. Go-Go, I think, is a complete ace with interests in 2-D and 3-D hunks that are daredevils in their free time.”

The broader man passes a hand over his face. Whether to muffle a mortified groan or hysterical laugh, he’s not sure. Wasabi opts to respond to the latter half of Fred’s rambling explanation. “You, uh, tell Go-Go of that theory?”

“If I possessed some physical quality that was immune to death, I would totally tell Go-Go of my theories,” says Fred very seriously.

“I don’t want to talk about romance with you,” Wasabi decides. “Especially not at—“ He squints at his watch. “Eleven-thirty at night.”

Without missing a beat, Fred tosses out, “I hear college is a good time for experiencing all that life offers. Like romance.”

They don’t speak for the rest of the night, except when Fred finally stands up to chivy Wasabi out and Wasabi, feeling something like regret dig at his chest, mutters a brusque ‘good night’ when he’d never say anything before. Before, they had usually parted ways with a silent nod, or maybe a grin and a friendly pat on the shoulder.

Wasabi is not a talkative person.

He’s starting to feel like Fred always endeavors to make him betray that aspect of his personality.

-

“This is an intervention,” says Tadashi firmly. Out of his solitude, he is parked sideways in a chair with his laptop on a precarious perch atop his knees. Wasabi, jolted from the buzz of productive work, finally raises his head to take note of his surroundings: Go-Go, Honey Lemon, and Fred are nowhere to be seen. He’s in his own chair working at v.2 of the laser beam baby. The lab is empty of witnesses to his impending murder.

“Uh.” His vocabulary has taken a downturn to this summer, and it’d sort of tick Wasabi off, except he knows the cause of it happens to be his degrading social skills. Wasabi scrambles for something snap back. “Usually interventions are a ‘friends’ thing, not a ‘friend’ thing. Plural intended.”

Tadashi raises a finger. “Ah-ah. This, my friend, is what everyone calls _payback_.”

Two pairs of dark eyes clash forces, and inevitably, Tadashi wins out of sheer bullheadedness.

“There’s a reason why half the lab population thinks you’re an ass,” says Wasabi mulishly.

“Don’t even try distracting me from the intervention – Honey Lemon and Go-Go agreed that this was my duty as bros to, well, intervene.” The engineer closes his laptop and faces forward, concern in his eyes. “So. Relationships.”

Judging by the fascinating way Tadashi is bracing himself like he’s about to face a sobbing and tearful Wasabi, he’s guessing that Tadashi hadn’t been thinking of the future when volunteering to solo the intervention.

It eases Wasabi’s concern, at least. He blows out a gusty sigh and slumps back in his chair. “Relationships,” he agrees. “And, you know, congratulations on _yours_ which I completely assisted with as your fellow wingman.”

Quirking the corners of Tadashi’s lips up is a placid smile. “Yeah, thanks for the unique circumstances. It’s a real dime-novel romance you put us through.” A future with diabetic-inducing donuts is being promised under that casual tone. “Anyway, we’re talking about yours.”

“Go-Go’s already made her views on it clear,” says Wasabi mildly. “Sorry for the entire Celine thing.”

Tadashi exhales what sounds like ‘oh my god’ and switches gears entirely. “It is on behalf of us being bros that I am obligated,” he begins formally, “that I question your social awareness. More specifically, your awareness of the relationship spectrum.”

“What of it?”

“It doesn’t exist, Wasabi.” Beyond the admirable patience Tadashi possesses, there’s also the faint sense of expectancy. As the broader man goes to protest, the more slender of the two adds, “No, seriously, it doesn’t.”

Wasabi throws an arm over his eyes and squints them shut for good measure. “God,” he mutters under his breath. “Why am _I_ getting the lecture?”

“Oh, trust me, Fred’s undergoing the same thing from Honey Lemon and Go-Go,” responds Tadashi breezily. “I just, remember, volunteered to do it to you out of sheer bro-bonds.” He finger-quotes the ‘bro-bonds’. “And for your display of wingmanship. Really touched my heart there, buddy.”

“I hate you,” Wasabi groans. “Tell me that’s all you wanted to say, that I’m worse at identifying romance than you.”

“Alright, that’s hitting below the belt. All I wanted is to psychoanalyze you through subtle means, but now I might as well be blunt.”

He gestures expansively. “By all means.”

“Are you getting the fuzzies from anyone right now?” demands Tadashi, and Wasabi almost falls off his own chair, spluttering. Relentless like the fog that rolls in from the Bay, the engineer elaborates, “The butterflies in the stomach. The warm feelings that people get from hugging gigantic teddy bears. The—”

“I know what you mean!” yelps Wasabi, struggling to reclaim his balance. “But what the _hell_?”

“ _Are you_?”

Wasabi’s phone buzzes, and he latches onto that sliver of hope so fast, he completely ignores Tadashi’s insistent queries and the caller ID. Sliding the ‘answer’ key right, he holds it to his ear and spits out, “Hey! Mom, you’re at my house? What a surprise! ... Yeah, yeah, I’ll come and unlock the door.”

There’s a startled silence for all of two seconds, and Fred’s voice is reedy in his ear, “ _Yeah, yep, I know! Let me just go grab the pizza from Marco’s before it closes and I’ll meet you there in five minutes!_ ”

Hastily, Wasabi stands—his chair screeches against the floor—and excuses himself. “Yep, that was Mom. Made a surprise visit to my apartment, the sneaky woman. Gotta go before she, uh, finds my hamper of dirty clothes under the kitchen table.”

When he flees from the lab, Tadashi’s shouting a reproachful, “I am _not_ forgetting you scorned me for your mother, Wasabi!”

-

Wasabi and Fred cower together for an hour in an internet café, tacitly agreeing not to speak of their problems, and then they leave, wallets lighter than when they arrived.

-

In all honesty, Wasabi should have expected this after Go-Go’s pointed observations about his relationships and Tadashi’s attempt to solo an Intervention. But Honey Lemon’s never cornered him before alone in the lab, so he ought to be forgiven just the once.

“Sit,” she commands, pointing at his chair.

Dubious about the nature of the situation, Wasabi tries to escape. “I just remembered I had stuff to do, actually, like laundry—”

“ _Sienta_ ,” Honey Lemon snaps. Growing up in a community where at least twenty-five percent conversation is Spanish, Wasabi’s brain acknowledges the command and forces him to sit meekly at his desk, hands folded over his lap.

“So I hear you’re asking for a solid sphere of tungsten-carbide,” Wasabi desperately says.

Her hands are on her hips, her face is scrunching into a fierce scowl, and she’s wearing the four-inch platform heels. In short, he’s doomed. Doomed and betrayed. “Wasabi.”

Only one way to escape the situation: bear through with it. Honey Lemon strikes fast and quick, like the good pediatricians who have to vaccinate children, but she’s also in a relationship with Tadashi. Maybe Tadashi’s overcomplicating (and at times oversimplifying) personality hasn’t rubbed off on her?

“Tungsten-carbide, diameter of a meter! You know that that metal’s used in bridal jewelry?” he tries.

“ _William_.” Green eyes catch his, and Wasabi’s helpless. “This is an intervention,” she declares.

“Another?”

Some part of him wishes she’d say in no uncertain terms, ‘Get your shit together, Wasabi, we care for your wellbeing and mental health.’ The other, larger part of him squirms and rejects the idea of accepting overbearing advice from his friends.

She blows right over his weak joke.

“The university’s holding the science fair soon, Tadashi’s getting worried about Hiro’s nightly outings to the point he’s wondering whether he should introduce him to us as _inspirational models_ , Go-Go’s found a new motivation to stick to the same project she’s had since freshman year, and you and Fred—” She’s ticking off each unrelated point off on her tapered fingers. Nevertheless, Wasabi feels inappropriately humiliated for being a problem on Honey Lemon’s list.

Wait.

“What about me and Fred?” he demands, obstinate.

Visibly, Honey Lemon switches gear. “ _Olvídalo_. Stop staying out so late in the labs, _por favor_? I know Freddie’s here to get you home, but he’s been getting more lenient about it. Which is not good! Even in the middle of summer, you’re still pulling all-nighters and exhausting yourself!”

“He has _not_ ,” argues Wasabi ineffectively. “I’m making progress, and he gets that if I’m thrown out of work too soon, then my mental process essentially disintegrates into theory.”

She crosses her arms; he mimics her.

Honey Lemon wears obstinacy much better. “I’m checking in _todas las noches_ , okay?”

“Okay, okay.”

-

In the last month of summer break, Tadashi finally brings over the infamous Hiro. He’s small, slightly gawkish, and entirely teenager-y. Post-introductions, post-Fred showing off the completely wrong school mascot costume, they all watch Hiro step into Tadashi’s sacred sanctum.

“I think I’m jealous,” confesses Wasabi, watching the door swing shut.

“It’s really empty,” assures Fred, dragging his beanbag to the outskirts of Wasabi’s territory. “Except when Tadashi pulls out his marshmallow bot, then it gets a bit crowded.” Hiro’s screech is audible; Wasabi attempts to remember if Fred was that vocal. He’s pretty sure Fred had went through the testing process without pain.

Honey Lemon dusts herself off, pink particles adrift for a second and then zooming back onto the fabric. “Careful,” she warns cheerfully, “they stick to clothes like coffee stains.” As lab protocol dictates, however, Honey Lemon moves to go outside and find the janitor’s closet. Several months into sophomore year, Callaghan had realized too late the consequences of squeezing every lab student into one space and had thus ordered everyone responsible for their own mess.

The later installations of security cameras enforced the new rule, even if it chafed at the arsonistic tendencies of several students.

Fred and Wasabi watch Tadashi and Hiro amble out of the sanctum, Hiro looking decidedly uninspired by the science done in a safe, secured area. “Geniuses,” sighs Wasabi, powering his computer on. There’s another lab requisition he wants to fill out, though the likelihood of it passing is honestly low. “I’ve no idea what Tadashi expected to do here with him.”

“Too good for SFIT?” asks Fred.

“Possibly.” Wasabi shrugs. “He’s an inventor more than he’s a student.”

Fred says, knowledgably, “Geniuses.”

-

Despite Hiro enlisting Tadashi and co.’s help in lugging mass-produced nanobots from crate to rolling bin, Fred finds the time to enquire about his friends’ entries into the science fair.

He hears Go-Go flatly state, “I’d run them over. That’s it. That’d be my demonstration.” Slightly in disbelief, Wasabi turns from dumping yet another damn crate of nanobots to stare at Go-Go; she has a placid, deadpan expression. Her right hand’s fingers drum against her crate with every sentence.

 The alley cat leans in conspiratorially. He’s the only one with no arm muscles to speak of and thus doesn’t have to lug around the crates. “In half or flat?”

She audibly breaks. “I’ll run _you_ over _in half_.” Quite possibly, she means to lift up her cargo and shove it into Fred’s face.

“Fred!” chirps Honey Lemon, who’d known much better than to lead Fred on with a dream scenario. “You haven’t asked Wasabi what he would do! I’m sure it’d be great, right?” She stares at Wasabi. Wasabi only gets to mouth a stricken ‘ _why me_ ’ at her before Fred spins around.

“Lasers,” he and Fred say, unusually in-sync. Unlike each other, Fred’s got his hands raised in finger-guns and Wasabi’s clinging tightly to his crate.

Wasabi narrows his eyes. “Laser pistols are implausible.”

Undaunted, Fred switches to a sword pose, lunging forward in some bastardized fencing action. “Lightsaber!”

“I’m—” Wasabi pauses and runs the idea in his mind. _I mean, theoretically, that’s possible? It’s just a matter of defining the field the laser can extend—_ oh, God, he’s considering it. Even worse, Fred sees Wasabi actually digesting the idea.

He lights up. “Oh-h-h my gosh, can you make a lightsaber?!”

Just in reflex to Fred’s request (because they’ve all gotten used to denying Fred’s stretches of fantastical wishes), Wasabi says, “No.”

Shit, he hears the wobbly tone of a lie in his voice. _Go-Go_ hears the wobbly tone, the one that says ‘I’m lying, I probably can’, and she whirls around like a spinning top and lets her crate drop into the bin. “ _No_ ,” she echoes. “Ethics, remember that Ethics class we all had to take, you moron?”

Fortunately, Wasabi does. “Yep. Yep, I do. Ethics say no, Fred.” Attempting to lessen the blow, Wasabi jokes, “What color would you have wanted it, anyway? Red? Blue? Purple?”

“Green,” Fred shoots back with confidence, and by God, does Wasabi’s pulse thud a bit harder.

He hears Tadashi cough in the background, where he’s watching Hiro successfully engineer a nanobot-control headset. Ongoing bet inside their crew is that Hiro scores a full ride to SFIT after his presumably successful showcase. The sheer amount of engineering the kid achieves inside his _garage_ terrifies the crap out of Wasabi; he can’t really imagine Hiro’s inventions in an encouraging environment.

“I’ll put it on a bucket list,” manages Wasabi. “It’ll be your seventieth birthday present, how’s that?”

Fred squints at him, probably reading way too deep into Wasabi’s half-hearted compromise. “Seventieth? Evil, but heartwarming all the same!”

Tadashi cuts into the conversation, unreasonably amused. “Alright, cut the morally-questionable promises. So the showcase is in a week,” Hiro makes a dying noise under his big brother’s arm, “and _everyone_ knows it’s a formal event. Right?”

“He means,” translates Go-Go, “do you own a black tie and formal clothes, Fred.”

Solemnly, Fred places a hand over his heart. “I _so_ do.”

For the life of him, Wasabi doesn’t get why he’s anticipating the showcase more than usual.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some three months and seventeen pages later comes a 7k project that's more fluff than any substantial relationship breakthroughs. Apparently that's what I get for not planning a romance out in three chapters. Ah, well. This story still remains only three chapters, because there are other things I'd like to do in this universe (somehow concerning only Fredsabi what is wrong with me). 
> 
> Thanks for slogging through, congratulations for hitting the end, and have no hesitation in leaving some criticism behind. I still have no beta reader, but I'm starting to actively edit as time goes on.
> 
> *edited 9/11/16


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crazy, wild things happen. And life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're an old reader, check back on the earlier chapters! they've been edited to flow a little better, and now should be entirely in Wasabi's P.O.V. if you're a new reader, welcome!

**Fred** : hey  
**Fred** : i’m lost

Wasabi rolls his eyes, tugs at the discomforting bowtie for a moment, and texts back, ‘do you see the really big signs @ lab with arrows?’ He gets an affirmative, so he continues, ‘follow em and get over here. hiro’s setting up.’ Not five minutes later, Wasabi gets tapped on the shoulder.

“How long ‘till Hiro’s blowing everyone outta the water?”

He… needs a second before answering that. Wasabi forces himself to be clinical and swift with his once-over— _be like Honey Lemon_ , he urges himself. Gone are the ill-fitting clothes, gone is the dirty street image Fred’s been projecting since forever. Fred looks upper-class. The suit _fits_.

“Couple of minutes. He needed to retie his tie, and Tadashi wants to protect his big brother image,” Wasabi finally answers. “See the other tech when you came in?”

Fred grins. “Oh yeah. Underwater bicycle man, I like his style! Not sure what the aim of his tech was, though. I was kinda running over here.”

In lieu of an actual explanation, Wasabi attempts to simplify it. “Remember the breathing apparatus that Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon got in Phantom Menace? Yeah, think of it like that.” The shine in Fred’s eyes is familiar and stomach-flipping.

“So lightsabers are definitely in my future!” he cries, throwing a comradely arm over Wasabi’s shoulders. Wasabi stumbles a bit, regains his balance, and makes a tentative truce with his germaphobia.

“They are _not_ ,” contradicts Wasabi. “Not for a very long time, if I can help it.” He checks his phone’s watch. “Let’s go, or else Tadashi will shame us forever.” They join the rest of the crowd swarming over to the massive, currently empty stage, save for a dozen recycle bins full of nanobots.

-

 _How did I get here_? is the first question running through Wasabi’s head. Said head is pounding with too much smoke inhalation and a multitude of screams from far away. _Oh, right_.

Beside him is an unconscious Tadashi, cheeks dusty with soot and clothes faintly charred. Beside Tadashi is a crying Hiro, both hands clutching his brother’s shirt. Hopefully, the little man’s too focused on his big brother because Wasabi feels the inclination to curse.

“ _Son_ of a gun,” mutters Wasabi, staring into the night sky and gingerly twitching his limbs. Twisting and billowing up in the sky, the smoke column just continues building. Heat flares against his back, his neck, god _damn_ , he hurts. “Sonuvagun,” he hisses again, attempting to flex his fingers.

Hiro notices his conscious state and scrambles to kneel at Wasabi’s side. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he babbles, fingers curling tight in his trousers. “Go-Go—I think Go-Go dragged the others over to a safe zone, and you came back, and—and—”

“Chill,” Wasabi croaks. “Chill, little man. Anyone know we’re here?”

The kid raises Tadashi’s phone. “Y-Yeah. I sent a text saying we’re safe to Honey Lemon. Was that—was that okay?”

It could be worse. Honey Lemon will undoubtedly be grateful for getting the news that her boyfriend (and quite frankly, one of her best friends ever) is safe, and she’ll smother Hiro with light pecking kisses in the manner of a concerned older sister. Tadashi, however, is going to have to navigate that rocky strait where Honey Lemon realizes she likes Tadashi a bit too much for a college relationship.

Wasabi does not envy Tadashi that upcoming conversation. He only hopes to be on Hiro’s end of the spectrum—light pecking kisses of gratitude.

Go-Go might strangle them both, Tadashi for his hero-complex and Wasabi for abandoning a sure safety for the unsure safety of returning to the burning hall.

He can’t predict Fred, so he doesn’t bother. A lightheaded part of his mind drifts to wondering about the possibility of tight hugs and Fred keeping him company back at his apartment so Wasabi doesn’t have to live through a deathly silent morning…

“Yes,” Wasabi belatedly answers. “Yeah. You did good.” He lets out a pained shaky exhale. “Next time you see your brother run for a flaming building, tackle his knees,” he advises. “Also, heroic sacrifices backfire _stupendously_. Not to say being a hero’s dumb. Tadashi probably had the right thing in mind, he just forgot he’s not a damn civil engineer.” Black spots dot his vision when he tenses his abdominals. “ _Goddamn_ ,” he hisses, fire racing up his lower back.

Hiro tentatively raises his hands. “I think you got the brunt of the explosion’s force. You—you kind of tackled Tadashi? By the waist? And like right before the explosion happened, you were rolling with him and then—”

“Blam,” Wasabi finishes faintly. “How’s the hair?”

The kid peers at his head. “Still there. Smoking a bit? No fire.”

“Good, good…” Vision’s fading. “Get… get paramedics ASAP. ASAP, Hiro.” And… gone.

-

A lot of people are trucked over to the hospital for mostly smoke inhalation. Wasabi and Tadashi wound up stuck together in the same hospital room out of space limits. Currently, the computer engineer’s snoring, exhausted from holding a conversation with his immediate family while Wasabi was asleep.

A heavily-bandaged Wasabi wakes to a large unopened jar of Nutella and a plastic bag holding apple slices resting on his bedside table.

“Hey, man,” greets a subdued Fred. Back in his street clothes again, though they look more rumpled than stained. His hair’s tied back for once.  Incredibly, Fred’s learned boundaries at the exact wrong time; he’s leaning against the doorframe, hands tucked out of sight.

“Grragh,” responds Wasabi. “Everyone good?” He does his best to gesture Fred closer.

Fred huffs a laugh and tugs a chair to Wasabi’s bedside. “Y’know, we’re good but we’re not _good_. Almost had two friends die because of some freak explosion. Puts anyone down in a mood.” He laces his fingers together, studiously avoiding Wasabi’s inquiring stare. “I overheard the docs saying you’ll be good in the long-run. ‘Lightly burned’. You got lucky.”

Wasabi’s inclined to agree. “Definitely coulda been worse,” he slurs. “’cording to Hiro, I got the _brunt_ of it. Good suit.” He squints at Fred. “Are… did I bypass the immediate-family-first clause?”

A nervous laugh bubbles out of Fred. “Not hilariously, they skipped the clause since your family’s in the valley. You’ll get a call from them in the morning.”

He squints harder. “Honey Lemon didn’t come in with you?”

“She’s, ah, indisposed. I’m not saying she’s trying to forge an ID to go buy tequila, but Go-Go’s an enabler.” Fred shrugs. “Or disabler. I was free.”

Wasabi lets the matter go, slumps back into his pillows. “Glad you’re here,” he mumbles. “Would’ve sucked to be alone.” No wonder Tadashi had immediately fallen asleep—conversation while injured is _draining_.

Fred reaches over and pats Wasabi’s forehead gently. “Go to sleep, big guy.”

-

“You’re dumb,” says Tadashi when Wasabi wakes up, four days into occupying a hospital room together. Fred had fibbed a bit in saying ‘ _lightly_ ’ burned; it’s really more like ‘get ready for a lot of pain meds and observation’. “You shouldn’t have just rushed after me without a plan other than ‘get him’.”

“Did you or did you not rush into a burning building with no other goal but ‘save Callaghan’?” demands Wasabi, groaning as he sits up. _This must be Purgatory_ , he thinks miserably. _Burns and a nagging Tadashi._

Tadashi’s lips flatten into a tight line, but he eventually mutters, “Yeah. Fine, that was also stupid.”

“I’m glad we agree we’re both morons,” replies Wasabi drily. It startles Tadashi into laughter—pained, but still definitely amused.

-

Their hospital stay does not last forever, thankfully, and the expenses are covered by an apologetic SFIT. Wasabi suspects a sop to Tadashi, considering that Hiro got accepted to the college with an enviable full ride.

(First stop for them both is home; Tadashi is mobbed by his aunt and brother, Wasabi takes a cab to his apartment. It’s curiously clean of dust and molding food, but his cupboards have been stocked by a mysterious benefactor.)

The unfortunate consequence of being released at this time is that it’s a few weeks to school, and the overachieving engineering students from out of state and town are starting to trickle onto the campus. Sophomore engineering/applied science kids especially come to investigate their new lab and grapple with the novel concept of a communal lab space.

Some of them behave and stay on the right side of the caution tape and totally accept the fact that four of SFIT’s students have adopted a hobo.

Some point it out like the total jackasses they are, and those some _don’t_ stay on the right side of the caution tape. Wasabi’s tempted to ignore their trespassing, except he doesn’t need an expulsion for allowing a sophomore to be injured on his watch.

“ _I’m_ not a hazard,” the sophomore argues. “That _beanbag_ is.” Wasabi has a firm hand gripped on the sophomore’s thin shoulder, and he’s steering him out of their unofficially claimed territory. Recovering or not, Wasabi’s still the best at pretending to be scary to underclassmen.

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to be on this side of the lab,” snorts Wasabi. “So you can shut up about it.”

“It’s against lab protocols!”

Fred volunteers: Your _face_ is against lab protocols.

Wasabi tells the Fred-voice to shut up. Aloud, he snaps, “Callaghan had cordoned off this area for us, which means we have permission for that beanbag. And everything else.” Well, maybe not whatever Go-Go’s holding menacingly in her hand.

He’s having a glare-off with the sophomore when Fred inconveniently decides it is a good time to walk through the door holding goodies.

In disbelief, the sophomore stares at Fred’s second-hand clothing and takes in the containers of cookies and single red apple. He connects it with the beanbag and opens his mouth to say something probably offensive about Fred himself when Wasabi steps in his line of sight, an intimidating glower on his face.

“And everything else,” he repeats. Behind him, Wasabi thinks he hears Fred deposit the goodies on a table and sidle close to Go-Go to mutter a question. “Scoot.”

He watches the sophomore snap his mouth shut, face tinted pink, and stalk away to bother other incoming (and some returning) students. Then Wasabi’s spinning around to possibly glare the others into not saying anything –

“You know, I hear upperclassmen are supposed to be the guiding lights for the underclassmen,” Fred comments, having apparently gained a ghost’s ability to manifest out of thin air. Hands in pockets, shoulders loose and limber, a grin on his angular face. “I can bet you that sophomore’s gonna stay late at the labs.”

Wasabi grasps blindly for something to say. Fred’s four inches shorter than him, and normally Wasabi would lord it over his head, literally. Except now Fred’s up in his face, and there’s something discomforting about being this close.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tadashi pumping one fist into the air and holding his phone out like he’s recording how Wasabi dies of embarrassment. Go-Go’s gone back to her work, and Honey Lemon’s also eyeing him and Fred.

“Rigged bet,” Wasabi manages, and then he sidesteps Fred and walks back to his station. “Alright, guys, seriously next time? Go-Go deals with the newcomers.”

“Over your dead body,” says Go-Go vehemently. “Your dead. Eviscerated. Emasculated. Body.”

-

It’s the second time Wasabi sees Fred in a suit that he understands that what he’s feeling is an inappropriate attraction. Two reasons for the inappropriateness. One, they’re at Callaghan’s funeral, closed-casket and off to the side of his daughter’s gravestone—people who consider the idea of forming a romantic attachment when at the scene of a funeral deserve to burn in a cold section of hell.

Two, it’s _Fred_. Goes without saying that there’s several layers to the man. Below the hobo persona, there’s the geek, and below that, there’s the undeniable existence of a well-off young adult with questionable social standards. And Wasabi, god help him, likes the arrangement they’ve got going as friends. Late nights at the lab, quiet conversation, snacks and tea.

 _Later. I’ll think on it later_ , Wasabi decides, shoving the idea into a locked box.

“I didn’t know he had a daughter,” says Fred, stepping out of the crowd of students who showed up to pay their respects. More students here than family. Even SFIT graduates and bigshot scientists have dragged themselves to upstate California.

He’s edging closer to Wasabi under the umbrella.

“He was a private man,” says Wasabi, raising an eyebrow at Fred’s advance. “You know, umbrellas work best for people who aren’t already soaked to the bone—do _not_ get my suit wet, it’s brand new.”

Fred whines, “I’m super cold, man.”

Wasabi rolls his eyes. “We’re going to Tadashi’s place after, remember? Remind yourself of all the donuts and coffee, that’ll warm you.”

Later, because Wasabi cares about his car’s interior, he tosses several towels in Fred’s face. He also jacks up the heater.

-

There’s this entire fiasco, later, where Hiro gets himself tangled up in discovering a massive cover-up by Alistair Krei and foiling Callaghan’s attempt at murder by stolen technology. Tadashi runs himself down to the bone trying to restrain Hiro’s new altruism, a characteristic he blames himself for encouraging.

“You got to help people, but not at risking your own!”

“Isn’t that selfish, preserving your life before others?”

They are back in Fred’s mansion ( _mansion,_ Jesus; Wasabi had bet on Fred being well-off, not rich beyond man’s imagination), and unfortunately, everyone is witness to the start of the Hamada quarrel. The only consolation is that Tadashi and Hiro proceed to take it outside.

It doesn’t stop Fred from occasionally peering out a window with a frown. Wasabi, in a reverse of the usual, is sprawled on Fred’s couch. The girls retreated several minutes ago to filch sweets and drinks from the kitchen; their gear is in two neat piles by the door. His is stacked atop a table, laid out neatly: chestplate, gauntlets, shinguards. Fred’s monster bodysuit holds the reverential spot next to a door—possibly leading to a bedroom.

Wasabi’s got no idea what they’re waiting for—perhaps for Fred to offer rides home. His van is still stuck at the bottom of the ocean.

“Still at it?” he asks Fred, exhaustion settling in his voice.

Grimly, Fred confirms the question with a ‘yes’. “I get where both of them are coming from,” he confesses. “Even though the entire sibling protectiveness is flying over my head.”

“They’ll get over it. It’ll come back up again when Hiro moves into the lab, probably.” The reversal of topics reverses Fred’s mood—Wasabi settles in further into the couch, readying himself for a conversation about how Hiro will fit into the lab dynamic. No question about whether Hiro fits into their _crew’s_ dynamic, evident in the easy way the little man interacted with them during a battle, but civilization is tricky.

Any minute now.

Hiding a groan, Wasabi props his upper half up with his elbows and squints in the general direction of Fred. Gingerly, he asks, “What’s bugging you?”

Fred walks over to the couch, uncharacteristically quiet. He sits on the floor by Wasabi’s legs. “Hiro’s definitely going to be pushed up to a sophomore level,” he says, revealing absolutely nothing. “I bet he’s an all-nighter inventor.”

Wasabi lets his elbows give out and his eyes drift to the ceiling. “Tadashi will rein him in,” he responds just as carefully. “I’m sure he won’t let a sleep-deprived little brother engineer miracles. At one in the morning.” Trying to imagine himself working with Hiro sort of works. Can anything the kid be any more dangerous than Honey Lemon or Go-Go?

He recalls Baymax’s chip being replaced by Hiro after Tadashi had been knocked out of the game for a few minutes (then again, they really should have been keeping an eye on the engineer). Wasabi refrains from wincing at the terrifying memory—the big marshmallow bot had never been more alike with the Stay-Puft Man.

(That had ended with Hiro and Tadashi verbally duking it out too.)

“Or… you could leave earlier,” suggests Fred, tentative. “Your current project’s technically finished. Unless you’ve already got a new idea lined up?”

Oh, right, Hiro had technically took Wasabi’s baby, ramped up the potential by several dozen levels, and promptly maxed the potential. Great, an existential crisis is settling in. “I guess,” Wasabi flounders for a proper answer. “I—well, no, not yet. Nothing school-appropriate.” An invisible laser wall had been pushing the limit.

Abruptly, he tries to imagine heading home earlier than eleven-thirty at night. He shudders at the concept. An empty, dark apartment, himself the sole occupant. No lazy conversation. No midnight runs to the local eateries.

Theoretical physics looms in his future.

Wasabi hears himself ask, “How much do you want that laser pistol?”

“What happened to ‘moral obligations’?”

He huffs a laugh. Trust Fred to remember that piece of information. “I’m sure some excuse will come up. That, or I’ll come up with a safer project.”  Wasabi thinks back to his old sci-fi movies, the implausible technology brought to life with CGI and art. “What about a containment field?”

“With your lasers?” Fred audibly exhales. “I mean, you already made a tiny wall. I guess you make five more of those and connect ‘em into a cube?”

They toss the idea back and forth, and for a while, it feels like peace.

-

Not a week later, Fred is at Wasabi’s door, ten o’ clock at night. Armed with a fruit basket, of all things, and a nervous grin. “You hear the celebration Tadashi and Hiro’s having?” he asks right after Wasabi warily opens his door. Rapid-paced, his chatter.

Wasabi’s head reminds him why he had to leave the lab much earlier than usual. “I—what?” Abruptly, he remembers his manners. Almost tempted to shake his head clear of cobwebs (a frighteningly bad idea), Wasabi instead waves Fred inside. “Sorry, sorry, come in.” He closes the door before a chill arrives and worsens his headache. A pair of sneakers joins a pair of jika-tabi by the doormat.

Completely unbidden and despite the fact he’s rarely been here (once? twice? Wasabi suspects Fred asking his staff to tidy his apartment), Fred marches into the tiny kitchen and sets the fruit basket down in a corner. The basket appears to be comprised of only red apples. Then he spins, grabs the half-empty mug of tea Wasabi brewed, and marches back out.

“Yeah, a celebration! They finished reconstructing Baymax, and they’re putting the original’s chip back in tomorrow.” Fred pushes at a bewildered Wasabi’s shoulders towards the living room instead of the bedroom—the door is open, and Fred keeps it out of his line of sight. “So, because I’m the best and most awesome of friends, the others thought I should get you back to a hundred percent again!”

“What am I at right now?” Wasabi lowers himself into the loveseat and accepts his tea with immense gratitude.

Fred wavers between perching on an armrest or taking the other seat—he ends up perched on the armrest, socked feet dangling. “Eh,” says Fred. He gives Wasabi a brief once-over. “Seventy, seventy-eight? Eighty puts you at well enough to go outside.”

“Does eighty also mean I go to the party?”

“Nope, that’s an eighty-seven. Ninety means you can stay for the _after-party_.”

It’s relaxing, the banter. Wasabi hears himself crack up, settle deeper into his two-person couch even though he left his bed and its comforts. A conversation rolls over him, easy to follow and soothing to listen. His headache retreats and returns in pulses, marked when Wasabi gives up on talking and focuses more on his mug. He’s taking a sip of tea when it hits him.

Fred’s deliberately restraining his usual spew of conversational bait.

At once, the night turns into a mish-mash of familiar and strange. Here’s Wasabi, busy with a problem: currently, his chronic headache. There’s Fred, eager for company: currently, a headache-afflicted Wasabi.

He distinctly recalls labeling his side of their friendship as ‘soundboard’. Besides Honey Lemon and Tadashi, Wasabi (according to Go-Go, masochistically) entertains Fred’s harebrained sci-fi inventions. Fred says something to spark a memory of a long-gone franchise— _phaser, please, please design a phaser, that’d be_ awesome—and Wasabi will rise to the challenge, striking it down with a firm denial.

Right now, Fred simply talks. Not anything too gushy or philosophical. Just things he saw at SFIT, at the piers, the Hamadas’ bakery: a group of students smuggling in a new refrigerator under the guise of requiring more space to preserve ‘specimens’, a sea lion flopping off a deck into the water, a gaunt-looking businessman pecking at a poppy seed bagel while filling in a spreadsheet.

Wasabi isn’t required to respond. He doesn’t feel the pressure to respond. That’s the crazy part.

“… becoming an English major, believe it or not,” Fred continues, oblivious to Wasabi’s minor crisis. “The essays are _crazy_ , man. I’ll finally have a good reason to stay up so late at the labs—” He startles at Wasabi’s failed attempt to stand, knees buckling under him. “Empty cup?” he asks lightly as Wasabi falls back with a huff.

“Yeah,” says Wasabi. He sets the cup down on the carpet. “Can you, uh—” he grimaces at the unhelpful awkwardness seeping through. “Blankets. There are blankets in my room, and I don’t think I want to try walking back.”

Fred slips off the armrest. “I was totally wondering when you’d ask about that,” he confesses. “Your apartment has like, zero heating.” Retreating from Wasabi’s sight, Fred calls out with a laugh, “How many blankets do you own? Also, do you want pillows?”

“No to the pillows,” he answers. Staring down at his three layers of tabi, Wasabi makes the executive decision not to inform Fred of the extras in the closet. “I have three blankets,” he lies.

“I’m counting four!” Not a minute later, Wasabi is drowned with three blankets—his duvet is notably absent. Drowsily, he watches Fred swoop down to pick up the discarded mug and place it somewhere safer (the bookcase), and then—

“Get back here,” he orders unintentionally. He’d blanch, but his complexion and his dignity refuse. Fred’s frozen at the end of the loveseat, a question lurking in his eyes. “If you want,” Wasabi adds, belated.

“Uh,” responds Fred. “Well.” He pulls out a flip-phone, texts a message. “Getting out of curfew,” he explains, then leaves to flip the lights, returns sans beanie to gingerly climb onto the other side. It takes a good long moment for Fred to say, “Alright, you blanket-hog, I only did bring three blankets over. Share the love.”

With a roll of his eyes, Wasabi relinquishes two and wraps the last tightly around his shoulders. “I refuse to be hunted by your butler if you freeze to death,” he explains.

“Eh, I’m sure you guys can bring me back as a zombie. Cryostasis! It’s pretty possible inside your apartment…” Wasabi closes his eyes, tilts his head back, and lets Fred’s rambling lull him to sleep.

He wakes up the next morning, six a.m., to a snoozing Fred, head listing dangerously to Wasabi’s shoulder. It’s still nightmarishly cold, but at least Fred brings his own heat. Getting up is a chore in itself. To justify the move, Wasabi shuffles over to his bedroom and retrieves his duvet. He returns to the couch, drapes it over Fred’s sprawled form, and carries on with his morning routine.

Teeth brushed. Then the kitchen lights flicked on, their glow unsteady. A text is sent to Go-Go, excusing himself from the lab set-up (school starts again in a few days, Jesus).

 **William** : Still have a headache. Say hi to the Hamadas for me.

Minutes later, his phone vibrates thrice. Wasabi’s picking up the basket of apples and weighing his culinary skills—pancakes or apples for breakfast? More importantly, turn on the stove to risk waking Fred, or spend an inordinate amount of time peeling apples?

 **Go-Go:** get ready for the party 2nite  
**Go-Go** : 7pm  
**Go-Go:** be there

 **William** : Got it.

He carries a bowl of peeled apple slices back to the living room. The television blinks on, settling on a muted local news channel. Wasabi sits on the floor against the couch and reads the headliners—something about a cartel. Another thing about a trio of sisters breaking out of a prison in the East.

“… pass the apples,” Fred says in a hoarse voice, jolting Wasabi out of his dazed state. He delicately picks out a sliver. “Any trouble?”

“Maybe.” Wasabi pictures the seven of them trying to protect San Fransokyo from the less savory elements of humanity. It’s laughable.

Tadashi and Honey Lemon are morally-inclined to pacifism. The younger Hamada, armed with an armored Baymax, is less so when incited.

Go-Go, by her own admissions, is perpetually on the knife-edge of her temper when dealing with ‘idiots’, and also, an adrenaline junkie. Fred admires lawfully-good protagonists (i.e., heroes) and had aspired to be part of them. Having achieved the latter, Wasabi can see no end in sight. Especially now that he has a monster suit.

And Wasabi. He likes order over chaos. Playing at vigilante seems like an invitation for more chaos to arrive. Trying to be government-sanctioned is just _asking_ for their technology to be confiscated and mass-produced for an already overpowered military. Ethics taught them that.

It always boils down to that in the superhero comics. _Ethics_. Patriotism. Loyalty. Duty.

“Wasabi?”

“What’s up?” More headlines. Illegal botfighting tournaments are being gatecrashed by the police. A petition calls for the legalization and regulation of botfights. Petty crimes on the rise. ‘Keep your wallet safe, your banks safer.’ A break-in at the suburbs.

There’s been too much quiet on Fred’s part—Wasabi cranes his neck to peer up at Fred, who’s also tracking the headlines. A blink, then green eyes are turned down. “Eh. How ya feeling? An eighty percent yet?”

“Eighty-seven,” corrects Wasabi. The glibness gets a wide grin in exchange. “Guess I’ll take the rest of the day for ninety percent to happen. You?”

From underneath the veritable mass of blankets, Fred wiggles his fingers and answers, “Gotta check on something back home.”

“And change your clothes.”

“Oh yeah, huh.”

They don’t really move from Wasabi’s living room for the next forty-five minutes.

-

“ _Listen_ ,” demands Tadashi. He’s commandeered the sole chair in the Hamadas’ garage, task of rebuilding Baymax complete. Supposedly, he’s brainstorming for his junior project. In reality, he’s being a pest while Hiro bounces around the house, high on sugar and excitement. “Wasabi, are you listening to me?”

“No,” Wasabi says honestly, tossing half an apple at the newly weakened laser wall, imported from the lab at school. The containment field idea he and Fred considered before the exhibition, that’s apparently _his_ new project. To accommodate for it, Wasabi’s added a vertical line of conductors—the effect, theoretically, is creating a tightly-woven net.

The apple sludges through the laser into uneven pieces.

Perhaps he should take another look at whether lasers were really the right way to go. Wasabi’s never heard of objects being bounced off of lasers, only incinerated. Then again, force fields are things of science fiction.

Tadashi sulks. “Well, see if I ever give you any advice again.”

Wasabi refrains from saying Tadashi’s advice is entirely lifted from either a) his older sibling experiences or b) self-help books skimmed at bookstores. “So we’re reactivating Baymax,” he magnanimously changes the subject. “Who rebuilt him?”

“Hiro.” A strange smile crosses the engineer’s face. “He… he improved him.” Regret? Envy? The latter is wildly out of place, so the former it must be.

“Medically?”

“What?”

A sigh leaves Wasabi. “Did Hiro improve Baymax’s medical prowess, or his physical abilities?” he clarifies. “Is Baymax still our big fluffy marshmallow?”

Automatically, Tadashi snaps, “Don’t call Baymax a marshmallow! He’s specifically built to be cuddly, like a _pillow_ or a _doll_ , you heathen.” Lips purse into an expression of philosophical contemplation. “He’s more durable,” the engineer admits. “Less likely to pop, but still malleable. Medical prowess? Hiro’s not the type to prioritize that stuff. Baymax is kind of his friend, not a tool.”

Wasabi eyes Tadashi.

“… Okay, that didn’t sound okay,” allows Tadashi. “But consider this: I’ve evolved artificial intelligence, if a robot can show an emotional attachment to Hiro.”

“If you’ve invented the cuddly version of Terminator, I’m calling Ethics,” threatens Wasabi. He wrestles with his options of decreasing the lasers’ potency further or trying to invent the property of resilience for plasma. Giving up in the meantime, he throws the other apple half at his invisible laser wall.

He and Tadashi watch it morph into pulp.

“Wow,” Tadashi deadpans. “Not sure why you’re reversing all your progress, but wow.” He looks like he’ll say more but keeps quiet for the next ten minutes.

Thankfully, the girls arrive, Honey Lemon riding behind Go-Go on a new two-passenger bike. Keeping to tradition, they both bear gifts for the hosts. Go-Go brings mandarin oranges, Honey Lemon a box of dark chocolates.

Wasabi squints at them. “Where’s Fred?”

“Text him,” responds Go-Go. “He’s not responding to any of mine.” She drops the crate of mandarin oranges onto Tadashi’s lap, garnering a loud ‘oof’ from the engineer. “Congratz. You’ve rebuilt your marshmallow.”

“Baymax’s not a marshmallow!”

“No, no,” agrees Honey Lemon. “Es un marshmallow _duro_.” Wasabi chokes back his laugh and glances to the side to share the humor with… apparently no one.

-

 **William:** You okay?

 **Fred:** might be late to the party  
**Fred:** go party in my spirit, oh grumpy one

Wasabi’s excused himself from the celebrations. It’d been a magical moment, sure, seeing Baymax’s form go from limp to upright, but from that point, the party had veered straight into a typical afternoon at the lab (except it’s 8 o’clock p.m. and in the Hamadas’ household). He’s still toying with the containment field—maybe if he reduced the effects of the laser to a low burn, instead of vaporizing anything it came into contact with, the item would get scorched.

Baby steps.

He hears the expensive car before it pulls into the driveway. Before he knows it, Fred is sitting next to him on the concrete floor, freshly-showered and dressed in clean, if casual, clothes. His eyes are rimmed red.

Wasabi assesses all this in a manner of seconds, and he ultimately chooses to say, “You okay?”

Yes, he wants to hit himself.

Fred blows out a loud, gusty breath. “Y’know…” he says thoughtfully. “I guess so. I mean, just met my dad in his super-secret superhero office, no big deal.” Despite the earth-shattering admission, Wasabi finds it easy to accept in the face of everything they’ve done the past week.

“This is the dad that’s been absent for the past… year, right?”

“Yeah, think more like my childhood and teenagehood. He, uh, told me it was to keep me safe.”

He slides his eyes to stare down Fred, because that is quite the explanation. Being safe in San Fransokyo is just as safe as living in New York City—sure, you’ll get mugged in the streets and mugged for the rent of your apartment, but there’s also that underlying tension of ‘oh, this city’s a pretty big target’. As Fred won’t return his stare, Wasabi looks back at his containment field.

This time, a mandarin orange slice is tossed through. Pulp. But still there, so that’s a marked improvement. It hasn’t been reduced to ash yet.

“Did you tell him what we did with Callaghan?” Wasabi certainly hasn’t with his own family. They’d flip at William even touching the _subject_ of fighting, past training in martial arts be damned.

“Eh. Thought that could stay within the team. Dad _might_ have some old contacts who could help advise us and stuff, but I’m sure no one really wants to do this for the rest of their lives.”

Oof. Guilty. “It doesn’t have the health insurance I’m aiming for,” Wasabi jokes weakly. For some odd reason, that’s what sets Fred off into a spasm of giggles. Fred laughing, head bowed, body shaking—that’s what spurs Wasabi to add (somewhat stronger), “And also, I’ve got stuff to do instead of dying.”

It’s cheesy. It’s cheesier than Tadashi and Honey Lemon’s rather fantastical get-together story. But God help him, Wasabi doesn’t want to treat Fred like he did his past relationships. A couple smart phrases about applied physics, a stretched out arm to emphasize that yes he’s at the peak of his health, an offer to buy coffee—the formula is unnecessary.

He gives plenty of time for Fred to pull the ‘no homo’ card; hell, Wasabi broadcasts his intentions to kiss Fred a full minute before he even leans in. He shifts position, his front facing Fred’s side. A heavy hand placed proprietarily on one of Fred’s knees temporarily stops the giggles, and Wasabi waits out Fred’s confusion until clarity comes, followed swiftly by a welcome warmth in his eyes.

“Hey,” says Fred. “Our friends tell me that we’re in a relationship.”

“Do you mind?” returns Wasabi. “I’m trying to confirm that.” Carefully, he presses a kiss to Fred’s mouth—Fred reciprocates, enthusiastically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit I finished it. well, I finished the story a few months ago, but I've been heavily revising the earlier chapters. Thank you to the people who've left comments even when this story was on hiatus for a basically a year, and to those who left comments while I was still feeling the story out. I hope the one kiss was worth the wait. XD

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know what exactly happened, other than I wanted to get idiot-Fred out of my head and replace it with human-Fred instead. I refuse to accept Heathcliff (supposedly Fred's one-man butler, which I also don't accept) allows Fred to get away with one pair of underwear for an entire week. Nor do I accept Fred wearing one pair of underwear for an entire week. 
> 
> Also - Wasabi is a babe.
> 
> -
> 
> Headcanons: names, pasts, little events, environments, conversations. Apologies for the sloppy grammar.


End file.
